Honors Theses

Date of Award

Spring 5-5-2022

Document Type

Undergraduate Thesis

Department

School of Pharmacy

First Advisor

James Stewart

Relational Format

Dissertation/Thesis

Abstract

Diabetes is one of the largest health concerns in the United States. Its continuous increase in prevalence has led to it being one of the largest healthcare costs and consistently listed as one of the leading causes of death. That being said, diabetes also increases the risk of other health conditions, one of which is cardiovascular disease. Left ventricle hypertrophy resulting in the stiffening of the left ventricle and diastolic dysfunction is one form of cardiovascular disease associated with diabetes. Thought to be impacted by decreased fibroblast migration in the extracellular matrix, the experiments performed in this study seek to review components believed to influence migration including the AGE/RAGE signaling cascade and glucose media concentration. Using cardiac fibroblasts isolated from diabetic and non-diabetic mice with an intact AGE/RAGE cascade as well as diabetic and non-diabetic mice with an impaired AGE/RAGE cascade the number of migrated fibroblasts was totaled with varying amounts of AGE and glucose concentration. The results of the study showed that diabetic RAGE knockout cells had the greatest number of migrated fibroblasts, migration increased as AGE volumes increased, and that glucose media concentration had no impact on fibroblast migration. This signifies that the AGE/RAGE cascade does influence the migration of fibroblasts. Furthermore, it appears as though cardiac tissue isolated from various genotypes maintain their in vivo qualities when cultured using different concentrations of glucose.

Accessibility Status

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Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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