Kathleen Morgan

The Morgan laboratory research group works at the intersection of neuroscience and the cardiovascular system.  We are especially interested in developing novel possible therapeutic approaches to prevent or reverse vascular dementia subsequent to aging-induced increases in aortic stiffness.  Increased aortic stiffness is known to lead to subsequent microbleeds and white matter lesions of brain tissue. We have previously shown that at least part of the observed aging-induced increases in aortic stiffness is due to defective vascular cytoskeletal protein-protein interfaces. We are now targeting those interfaces to construct potential therapeutic prototype molecules. With our collaborators, we are currently using a microbubble-targeted cell permeant decoy peptide approach to decrease the stiffness of the aortic vascular smooth muscle cytoskeleton in an effort to decrease the onset of Alzheimer’s Disease-Related Dementias in a mouse model of aging.

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