Contractile reserve decreases with advancing age and chronic isoproterenol (ISO) administration is a well-characterized model of cardiac hypertrophy known to impair cardiovascular function. This study evaluated whether nonsenescent, mature adult rats are more susceptible to detrimental effects of chronic ISO administration than younger adult rats. Rats received daily injections of ISO (0.1 mg/kg sc) or [...]
Plato BioPharma, Inc. (“PBI”) announced today that the company has committed to sponsor The American Physiological Society’s (APS) Novel Disease Model Awards for 2011 through 2013. Each year, the APS’s Physiologists in Industry Committee selects a Predoctoral and Postdoctoral fellow at the Experimental Biology conference as award recipients based on competitive abstract submissions. “PBI embraces [...]
Plato BioPharma, Inc (“PBI”) announced today that its Board of Directors has appointed a new director, Mr. Dan Mitchell, effective November 1, 2010. Dan has been in the venture capital industry for over 25 years focused on early stage opportunities primarily in healthcare and biotech industries. Dan also serves on the Boards of Directors of [...]
Plato BioPharma is pleased to announce that Dr. Craig F. Plato, CEO and Founder of Plato BioPharma, Inc (PBI) will be one of the speakers at the Sophion User Meeting XIV on October 4, 2010 at Sophion Bioscience, Inc.’s US headquarters in North Brunswick, New Jersey. Dr. Plato will provide a PBI company overview, details around [...]
ADInstruments and Plato BioPharma have established a strategic training partnership agreement to improve in vivo pre-clinical research practices by providing advanced education courses with hands-on world-class instruction in a state-of-the-art facility, featuring the latest advances in life science research equipment technologies. Dr. Plato has used ADInstruments PowerLab and LabChart software extensively since 2003 with 6 [...]
Stress signaling in the myocardium results in enhanced expression of embryonic β-myosin heavy chain (β-MyHC) and reduced expression of adult α-myosin heavy chain (α-MyHC), with the net outcome of diminished myofibrillar ATPase activity and impaired contractility. Pharmacological approaches aimed at preventing this myosin isoform “switch” could provide therapeutic benefit to patients with heart failure. Myosin [...]
Conventional indicator dilution techniques for measuring body fluid volume are laborious, expensive, and highly invasive. Bioimpedance spectroscopy (BIS) may be a useful alternative due to being rapid, minimally invasive, and allowing repeated measurements. BIS has not been reported in mice; hence we examined how well BIS estimates body fluid volume in mice. Using C57/Bl6 mice, [...]
Hepatic and circulating endothelin-1 (ET-1) are increased in patients with cirrhosis and in cirrhotic animals. However, the distinct roles of ET receptor subtypes ETA and ETB in cirrhosis and portal hypertension (PHT) have not been clearly elucidated. Thus, we studied the effects of selective ET-1 antagonists (ETA-ant or ETB-ant) and nonselective ET-1 antagonist (ETA/B-ant) on [...]
Vascular injury triggers dedifferentiation and cytoskeletal remodeling of smooth muscle cells (SMCs), culminating in vessel occlusion. Serum response factor (SRF) and its coactivator, myocardin, play a central role in the control of smooth muscle phenotypes by regulating the expression of cytoskeletal genes. We show that SRF and myocardin regulate a cardiovascular-specific microRNA (miRNA) cluster encoding [...]