The Ohio Physiological Society met October 6-7th at The University of Toledo located in Toledo, OH.

True to the name of this year’s conference, the Keynote address was given by Dr. Joseph Wu, Director of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute and current president of the American Heart Association. His research focuses on congenital heart disease in adults as well as cardiovascular imaging. His most recent clinical trials involve testing bone-derived stem cells for the treatment of heart attacks.

Other highlights:

Undergraduate student, Seth Brunner, spoke about their research at the University of Cincinnati where they examined the role of a platelet receptor in abdominal aortic aneurysms. They discovered that increased levels of this receptor may be a biomarker of abdominal aortic aneurysms in humans and that blocking this receptor could slow down the progression of aneurysms in animal models. (doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.07.02.547361 )

As you may recall from prior posts, Cope’s gray treefrogs (above) are freeze tolerant animals that routinely undergo regular cycles of freezing and thawing in the wild. Graduate student Elizabeth Yokum (University of Dayton) presented research showing that the composition of lipid membranes within tissues of Cope’s gray treefrogs vary depending on whether the frogs are acclimated to the cold and whether they have experienced freeze-thaw cycles.

Dr. Syed Baseeruddin Alvi, postdoctoral fellow at The Ohio State University, presented research exploring the use of nanoparticles to help the heart heal following a heart attack.

Graduate student Hemaa Sree Kumar at The University of Toledo spoke of how we can learn about interactions between the gut microbiome and host health from zebrafish, Danio rerio. (doi: https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2023.1186645)

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Categories: Agriculture, Aquaculture, and Livestock, Comparative Physiology, Environment, Extreme Animals, Hibernation and Hypoxia, Illnesses and Injuries, Nature's Solutions, Physiology on the Road

Tags: aneurysm, Freeze tolerance, frog, gut microbiome, heart attack, myocardial infarction, nanoparticles, Ohio, physiology