Frances Plane

Biography

Frances Plane is a professor belongs to the department of Pharmacology from the university of Alberta.

Research Interest

The goal of our research is to understand how blood vessels function under normal conditions with the aim of developing strategies to overcome vascular dysfunction in disease states such as diabetes. The diameter of small blood vessels, resistance arteries, is the main factor determining arterial blood pressure and local tissue blood flow and so must be tightly controlled. The two main cell types that make up blood vessels are the endothelial cells lining the lumen and the smooth muscle cells which make up the wall. Communication between these two cell types is crucial for the appropriate regulation of resistance artery diameter: endothelial cells regulate the contractile state of the surrounding smooth muscle cells via the release of diffusible factors, such as nitric oxide (NO), and by direct electrical coupling with smooth muscle cells via myoendothelial gap junctions (MEGJs) and our lab has recently shown that a converse signaling pathway, mediated by flux of second messengers from smooth muscle to endothelial cells via MEGJs, provides an important negative-feedback mechanism by which the endothelium can modulate vasoconstriction. Disruption of endothelial-smooth muscle cell communication is a hallmark of cardiovascular disease contributing to clinical manifestations such as high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, thrombosis and loss of limbs. Indeed, impairment of endothelium-dependent vasodilation can be used to identify individuals at increased risk for future cardiovascular events providing a "barometer" for vascular health. We are currently using a combination of functional, electrophysiological and molecular techniques to further elucidate how smooth muscle and endothelial cells interact to regulate resistance artery diameter and to identify novel therapeutic targets to restore endothelial function in disease.