The project

Vascular aging is characterized by slow, insidious, and asymptomatic alterations of vascular microstructures. Among those, the elastic lamellae (EL) of the vascular wall are primarily affected. Unfortunately, the early events forecasting EL alterations and failure remain mostly undocumented.

Synchrotron µCT images can provide new clues for understanding the vascular aging process. Indeed, their resolution, contrast and field of view are so high that they unravel fine structural details within the aortic wall, without cutting and labelling. This technology can capture the discrete and fine alterations occurring during the silent phases of the aging process. Finding, extracting, and analysing such massive and information-rich data is a real challenge.

Objectives

MODELAGE is a 48-month (January 2024-December 2027) image and data analysis project using massive biological data with high content with the objective of modelling these data and predicting vascular aging. Our working hypothesis is that monitoring aging will discriminate alterations that are markers of normal vascular aging from those linked to pathological aging. Understanding vascular aging in a preclinical model might provide clues about human aging and, hopefully, help clinicians in their daily practice.

With this in mind and in addition to arterial imaging, we set up a longitudinal follow-up of individuals with examinations and measures comparable to those performed by clinicians with human patients. The availability of these data together with our high-relsolution imahges should help to identify critical features/markers of aging that would predict disease.