European Perspectives in Cardiology.Funding: Human Frontier Science Program

Dr Santoro received an HFSP Career Development Award in 2008. It provided 3 years of funding for salaries, instruments, and reagents/disposables, which enabled him to set up his own lab at the University of Torino. His lab uses the zebrafish model system to identify new molecular mechanisms and pathways involved in the formation and maturation of blood vessels, particularly focusing on endothelial cells and vascular mural cells. Recently, they described vascular smooth muscle cells in the zebrafish during evolution, and they characterised, in collaboration with another lab, the role of catepsin D during zebrafish development. They have developed new techniques to study microRNA functions in the cardiovascular system in zebrafish, and, in collaboration with Pascal Meier, MD, in London, England, they are further characterising the vertebrate cIAP gene. “Before obtaining the Career Development Award, I had been working on cloning new zebrafish mutants with specific cardiovascular development defects,” says Dr Santoro. “I identified the tomato mutant, a null mutant of cIAP1 with specific apoptotic defects in endothelial cells. Later on, I was also involved in the characterisation of microRNA functions in the zebrafish cardiovascular system, in particular microRNA-126.”