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Cardiovascular disease is the nation’s leading cause of death. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one U.S. resident dies every 34 seconds from diseases affecting the heart and blood vessels. In the past 15 years, research has emerged showing that individuals with asthma have a higher likelihood of developing diseases of the cardiovascular system.

Today, that correlation is well-documented, though science hasn’t yet identified why asthma is a risk factor. Dovenia Ponnoth, Ph.D., a 91�㽶��Ƶ associate professor of pharmacology, has for several years focused her research efforts on the mechanisms underlying the association of airway diseases with the development of cardiovascular complications and on attempting to identify preventive therapies, including new therapeutic targets. Ponnoth recently received a $11,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for her research.

“We’re trying to identify receptor targets called bitter taste receptors and learn what they do when they’re activated, in terms of their role in asthma,” she said. “As their name suggests, these receptors help us to sense when something tastes bitter, but they’re not only on our taste buds and in our gastrointestinal tract; they’re also found in the heart, blood vessels, lungs and airways, where their function in health and disease is not fully understood. Certain drugs are known to activate them. We will expose mice to allergens to generate an asthma response, then give them different doses of a bitter taste agonist to see whether it improves the asthma.”

In order to examine the role the taste receptors play, a group of research specimens must be genetically altered. This is done by a collaborator of Ponnoth’s using a state-of-the-art gene-editing technology known as CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats).

“CRISPR allows us to go inside genes and make cuts and changes. My collaborator has used it to generate mice that have two particular alterations in these receptors. My role is to look at how the alterations affect the mice in terms of asthma. I will compare them with mice with unaltered genes and look at how the effects of the treatments match up,” Ponnoth said.

Earlier in 2022, Ponnoth was awarded a $50,000 NIH West Virginia IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence equipment grant to purchase a flexiVent lung function measurement platform that will allow her to conduct this and other ongoing research.

A flexiVent lets researchers measure the degree to which lung function is compromised as a result of asthma. Ponnoth is using the device to examine the effect certain medications have on difficulty in breathing.

“The flexiVent allows me to study changes in lung resistance and compliance associated with asthma as well as to test potential drug therapies,” she said. “The data generated by the flexiVent correlates clinically with human lung function, and will also be used to advance preliminary findings related to decreased lung function that occurs with aging, the mechanisms associated with those alterations and the effects of natural dietary supplements to improve outcomes.”

Ponnoth said that in addition to identifying the role bitter taste receptors play in asthma, she hopes the research will help lead to the development of new, targeted medications to more effectively treat asthma in humans.

“There are lots of drugs on the market to treat asthma, but there are people who are resistant to them,” she said. “We’re looking for alternate therapies and ways to prevent heart disease in asthmatics. Given that there is a subsection of people who are at much higher risk for cardiovascular disease than normal, it’s important to study asthma and ways to treat it.”

In addition to her research, Ponnoth teaches pharmacology, neuropharmacology and endocrine courses at 91�㽶��Ƶ. She said that since joining the school in 2020, she’s been pleased with the way 91�㽶��Ƶ allows her to balance her interests in being a scientist and an educator.

“I love teaching, I love my lab and I’ve made progress in my research. I’m getting things done. It has been great for my career goals to have such a supportive environment around me,” she said.