AMPK and Peripheral Vascular Insufficiency

Is AMP kinase activation a potential therapy for patients with peripheral artery disease? Listen as Editor in Chief Irving Zucker interviews lead author Todd Kinsella (Rigel Pharmaceuticals, Inc.) and expert Michael Massett (Texas A & M University) about the interesting new work by Baltgalvis et al. In the quest to improve exercise intolerance that plagues the millions of patients suffering from peripheral artery disease, Kinsella and colleagues developed and tested a series of indirect AMPK activators for beneficial exercise adaptation in a mouse model of aging, inactivity, and obesity. Did Kinsella and colleagues find any effect of AMPK activators on the microvascular and muscle dysfunction associated with intermittent claudication? Listen and find out.

Kristen A. Baltgalvis, Kathy White, Wei Li, Mark D. Claypool, Wayne Lang, Raniel Alcantara, Baljit K. Singh, Annabelle M. Friera, John McLaughlin, Derek Hansen, Kelly McCaughey, Henry Nguyen, Ira J. Smith, Guillermo Godinez, Simon J. Shaw, Dane Goff, Rajinder Singh, Vadim Markovtsov, Tian-Qiang Sun, Yonchu Jenkins, Gerald Uy, Yingwu Li, Alison Pan, Tarikere Gururaja, David Lau, Gary Park, Yasumichi Hitoshi, Donald G. Payan, Todd M. Kinsella Exercise performance and peripheral vascular insufficiency improve with AMPK activation in high-fat diet-fed mice Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol, published online February 21, 2014. DOI: 10.1152/ajpheart.00839.2013.