Faculty Fellowship

ADAMTS as regulators of versican 

Investigating proteoglycan turn-over in cardiovascular tissues

The physical properties of cardiovascular tissues are regulated by the extracellular matrix (ECM), the meshwork surrounding vascular cells. This ECM is rich in sugar-containing molecules, called proteoglycans, which are essential for their viscoelastic properties. Proteoglycans play a pivotal role in the development of pathologies such as aneurysms, atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease. Proteases called ADAMTSs regulate proteoglycan levels. My research aims to investigate how ADAMTSs perform this function, using a combination of in vitro and ex vivo biochemical assays, cell-based assays and proteomics. Moreover, I investigate how ADAMTS activity is implicated in the development of cardiovascular pathologies. 

Biography

Dr Salvatore Santamaria is a British Heart Foundation Basic Science Research Fellow. He is working in collaboration with Dr. Josefin Ahnström in the Centre for Haematology.  He obtained an MSc in Biotechnology from University of Pisa, Italy, in September 2008. He worked for one year as a Research Assistant in Prof. Armando Rossello’s laboratory, University of Pisa, where he characterised small molecule inhibitors of matrix metalloproteases. In October 2009 he joined Prof. Hideaki Nagase’s laboratory at Imperial College London where he isolated and characterised inhibitory antibodies of ADAMTS-5, a key protease in osteoarthritis. A substantial part of his PhD was spent in his co-supervisor Prof. Gillian Murphy’s laboratory (Cancer Research Institute, Cambridge) and in Dr John McCafferty’s laboratory (Biochemistry Department, University of Cambridge, and now Iontas Ltd). During this time he matured his knowledge of phage display and in vitro selection methods. He was awarded his PhD in 2014. From 2013 till 2015 he worked at the University of Oxford, first as a Research Assistant, then as a Post-Doc. During this period he investigated the effect of anti-ADAMTS-5 antibodies in cell-based and ex-vivo models of osteoarthritis.  He joined the Centre for Haematology at Imperial College in February 2015 as a Post-Doctoral Researcher in Dr. Josefin Ahnström's lab. His current research interests focus on the regulation of ADAMTS proteoglycanase activity in vascular diseases. Due to his contribution in the field, in 2019 he has been awarded by the British Society for Matrix Biology the Young Investigator Award. He was invited to give the prestigious "John Scott Lecture" at the Autumn 2019 BSMB meeting (Norwich, 9th September 2019).