Restoration of normal blood flow in atherosclerotic arteries promotes plaque stabilization.

Blood flow is a key regulator of atherosclerosis. Disturbed blood flow promotes atherosclerotic plaque development, whereas normal blood flow protects against plaque development. We hypothesized that normal blood flow is also therapeutic, if it were able to be restored within atherosclerotic arteries.

Improved Database Filtering Technology Enables More Efficient Ab Initio Design of Potent Peptides against Ebola Viruses.

The rapid mutations of viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 require vaccine updates and the development of novel antiviral drugs. This article presents an improved database filtering technology for a more effective design of novel antiviral agents. Different from the previous approach, where the most probable parameters were obtained stepwise from the antimicrobial peptide database, we found it possible to accelerate the design process by deriving multiple parameters in a single step during the peptide amino acid analysis.

Smooth muscle cells affect differential nanoparticle accumulation in disturbed blood flow-induced murine atherosclerosis.

Atherosclerosis is a lipid-driven chronic inflammatory disease that leads to the formation of plaques in the inner lining of arteries. Plaques form over a range of phenotypes, the most severe of which is vulnerable to rupture and causes most of the clinically significant events. In this study, we evaluated the efficacy of nanoparticles (NPs) to differentiate between two plaque phenotypes based on accumulation kinetics in a mouse model of atherosclerosis.