In June 2023, Jeremiah Stitham, MD, PhD; Irfan Lodhi, PhD and colleagues led by the corresponding author Babak Razani MD, PhD had their research article titled “Loss of Macrophage mTORC2 Drives Atherosclerosis via FoxO1 and IL-1β Signaling,” published by Circulation Research.
“The mTOR (mechanistic target of rapamycin) pathway is a complex signaling cascade that regulates cellular growth, proliferation, metabolism, and survival.” It has been shown that mTOR signaling activation has been associated with atherosclerosis, but the details of its role in lesion progression and in plaque macrophages are misunderstood.
In their research, the authors dismantle mTORC2 pathway functions in atherosclerosis by utilizing macrophage-specific Rictor- and mTOR-deficient mice.
Their findings are the first to provide the mechanistic details of macrophage mTOR signaling in atherosclerosis and suggest that “therapeutic measures aimed at modulating mTOR need to account for its dichotomous functions.”
Loss of Macrophage mTORC2 Drives Atherosclerosis via FoxO1 and IL-1β Signaling. Xiangyu Zhang, Trent D. Evans, Sunny Chen, Ismail Sergin, Jeremiah Stitham, Se-Jin Jeong, Astrid Rodriguez-Velez, Yu-Sheng Yeh, Arick Park, In-Hyuk Jung, Abhinav Diwan, Joel D. Schilling, Oren Rom, Arif Yurdagul, Slava Epelman, Jaehyung Cho, Irfan J. Lodhi, Bettina Mittendorfer, Babak Razani. https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.122.321542