Periodic Reporting for period 1 - VERA (VERA: Extracellular VEsicles, miRNAs and particulate Air pollution: developing a new tool to identify subjects with high exposure-associated cardiovascular risk)
Reporting period: 2018-04-01 to 2019-09-30
The Proof of Concept project VERA (Extracellular VEsicles, miRNAs and particulate Air pollution: developing a new tool to identify subjects with high exposure-associated cardiovascular risk) aims to confirm the commercial and technological feasibility of a tool (VERAKit) for testing EV-specific miRNA expression, in order to identify subjects with an higher susceptibility to PM. VERAkit allows a customized screening strategy aimed at: i) guaranteeing an early diagnosis of possible cardiovascular diseases; ii) minimizing not only the health consequences but also the economic impact deriving from the costs for treatment and the possible loss of working days.
The data produced during the present project supported the feasibility to apply the VeraKit to screen the individual susceptibility to the effect of particulate air pollution. Moreover, the miRNA signature investigated by the VeraKit resulted to be altered also in patients with a major acute cardiovascular event.
The next steps will involve the application of the VeraKit in a prospective investigation, in order to assess its predictive value and to better understand the timing of the molecular process (i.e. how long before the CVD event this specific miRNA signature becomes altered).