Cardiac resident macrophages versus recruited macrophages – developing targets to take advantage of their opposing roles in heart failure.

Heart disease is the most important cause of mortality in westernized nations, with heart failure, which is when the heart cannot pump sufficient blood, being the most prominent cause of hospitalizations in Europe. More than half of the heart failure patients have heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). HFpEF occurs in patients that present with additional disorders such as diabetes and hypertension. There is currently no successful treatment for HFpEF. People living with disorders such as diabetes and hypertension live in a state of chronic inflammation and it has generally been thought that inflammation drives HFpEF. But there are many types of cells involved in the immune response.  Specifically, you have resident cells in tissues and you have recruited cells from the blood.  We have results that the resident cells, called tissue resident macrophages, are initially proliferate.  At some point, the recruited immune response comes and then heart failure occurs.  We aim to show that the initial tissue resident macrophage response is protective, however, that at some point these cells fail resulting in the influx of recruited cells that end up damaging the heart.