Research projects

Throughout our lives, we are exposed to cellular stress, which causes age-related diseases, such as metabolic syndromes, atherosclerosis, and cancer. Although we have evolved several innate protective mechanisms from cellular stress, the damage is often cumulative and irreversible. However, in rare cases, patients with strong chronic stress such as uncontrolled diabetes, exhibit minimal organ damage, suggesting that they would have strong innate protective mechanisms. Although there are several methods of genetic analysis, including genome-wide association study and exome sequencing, the vascular protective mechanisms are still unknown. In this study, we used the endothelial cells (ECs) derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) of severe diabetic patients with mild atherosclerosis to examine these innate protective mechanisms and explore a molecular target, to propose a novel vascular protective mechanism against cellular stresses.