Congqing Wu
University of Kentucky, KY·Medicine & Clinical Research
Blood clots that form inside vessels, a process called thrombosis, are a leading cause of illness and death worldwide, driving heart attacks, deep vein thrombosis and complications of sepsis and COVID-19. Today's anti-clotting drugs block platelets or the clotting cascade.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Microbiology & Immunology
Physiology
- Topics
thrombosis
pyroptosis
plasma membrane rupture
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2030
What they work on
- Determine how NINJ1 in myeloid immune cells such as macrophages contributes to thrombosis. NINJ1 is the protein that actively ruptures the cell membrane during pyroptosis, an inflammatory form of cell death.
- Uncover how pyroptotic macrophages release microvesicles carrying tissue factor, the protein that starts the clotting cascade, and how this release depends on NINJ1-driven membrane rupture.
- Test whether blocking pyroptosis or NINJ1-mediated plasma membrane rupture can prevent thrombosis while leaving normal blood clotting after injury intact.
More about the research
These are the same pathways the body uses to stop bleeding after an injury, so the drugs carry bleeding risks. They also do nothing about inflammation, which increasingly appears to be a root cause of harmful clots. This project asks whether clotting can be prevented by blocking an inflammatory step instead, leaving normal clotting intact.
Why it matters
Targeting NINJ1-driven membrane rupture could lead to anti-clotting treatments that calm inflammation-driven thrombosis without the bleeding risk of current drugs. People who could benefit include patients with heart disease, venous thromboembolism, cancer, or bacterial infections and sepsis, where inflammation fuels dangerous clots.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
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Egil Lien
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Rafal Pawlinski
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Medicine & Clinical Research
Identify the disease-specific triggers that activate Factor XII, a protein that starts blood clotting, in sickle cell disease, using blood samples from patients and a mouse model of the disease.
The school
University of Kentucky: 34 labs on PI Pages, $528M a year on research, 319 research doctorates a year.
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