Odense Arterie Biobank

Short Summary

Odense Artery Biobank - "Relationships between molecular, structural and functional changes in the arterial system and the surrounding perivascular adipose tissue and specific risk factors in cardiovascular surgical patients"

More than every fourth death in Denmark is due to arterial disease and in many of the developing countries arterial disease is a growing problem.

Smoking, inactivity, and obesity are lifestyle factors significantly increasing the risk of developing insulin resistance, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and hypertension - factors that are all strongly correlated with arterial disease.   

We hypothesize that risk factors such as smoking and diabetes causes subclinical molecular, structural and functional alterations in the arterial system that are present at a very early stage and which eventually leads to vascular stiffness, dysfunctional remodeling, calcification, atherosclerosis and aneurysms, i.e.  a diseased arterial system.

Using modern high-quality techniques for RNA and protein quantitation as well as biomechanical and vasoactive functional testing, we expect to identify some of these very early subclinical changes believed to underlie arterial disease.  

Rationale

Our aim is to establish a human artery biobank by collecting well-defined dissected human arterial tissue samples, gathered from all cardiovascular surgery patients at Odense University Hospital.

A systematic approach, collecting all available tissue will enable us to obtain a large number of high-quality arterial samples allowing us to perform studies with more solid statistical power and to initiate new projects at more integrated levels than traditionally employed on human vascular material.

The arterial biobank is a unique resource for vascular research to be used both for explorative-based data-generated approaches and for hypothesis-driven projects primarily with the aim to define factors and pathways for the pathogenesis of cardiovascular conditions.

Description of the cohort

Patients are included by electively going through cardiovascular surgery - including aortic/mitral valve replacement, maze surgery, coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), carotid endarterectomy (CEA), thoracic and abdominal aortic aneurysms (TAA and AAA) - at the Department of Cardiac, Thoracic and Vascular Surgery, Odense University Hospital and The Department of Vascular Surgery, Lillebaelt Hospital, Kolding. All participants are over 18 years of age and have given written consent based on oral and written information. 

Data and biological material

Biological material (collected in a systematic and standardized manner)

• Preoperative blood samples (serum and EDTA-plasma).
• Biopsies of parietal pericardium and pericardial fluid.
• Arterial tissue (snap frozen, formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE), and cryo-embedded in O.C.T) including left internal mammary artery (LIMA), aortic punch (from aortocoronary bypass), carotid atherectomies, thoracic aortic aneurysm, and abdominal aortic aneurysm (wall and thrombus).
• Adipose tissue including thoracic and abdominal subcutaneous adipose tissue, perivascular adipose tissue (PVAT; from LIMA), epicardial adipose tissue, and peri-aortic root adipose tissue.

Clinical data

• Information regarding smoking habits, BMI, blood pressure/hypertension, lipid profile, diabetes, and use of medicine are registered from patient files and questionnaires.

Collaborating researchers and departments

Publications associated with the project