Research Awards Recipients

Lay Summary

Cardiovascular disease is a major complication in chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients. For reasons that are not completely understood, these patients develop, within their vessels, the equivalent of bone tissue (called calcification) that will damage their vessels leading to increased heart disease, amputations, chronic wounds, etc. There is currently no available treatment to reverse the process of calcification. There have been attempts to verify whether some drugs, when given orally, could reverse calcification in the vessels but the results have been disappointing. This may be explained by the fact that only a small proportion of these drugs are actually reaching the sites of calcification in the vessels. 

In order to develop a targeted therapy for blood vessel calcification, Dr. Mac-Way started a collaboration with an expert in nanoparticles (NP). NP are small particles that can be injected in the blood vessels and delivered to specific diseased organs. The use of these NP is better known in the field of cancer where NP-bound chemotherapy is used to target cancer sites and to avoid potential secondary effects in healthy organs. In this research proposal, he wants to verify: 1) if these NP could have an effect on blood vessel calcification and 2) if he can incorporate drugs that have anticalcifying properties within these NP to decrease or prevent blood vessel calcification.

Blood vessel calcification is responsible for reduced quality of life and increased mortality rate in CKD. Dr. Mac-Way proposes a unique strategy that has the potential to generate an innovative therapy in this area. If results are positive, the next step will be to test these NP in human.