Providence Research Profiles: Dr. Pascal Bernatchez

Providence Research is home to many outstanding researchers engaged in groundbreaking work. In our Providence Research Profiles series, we spotlight some of the remarkable individuals contributing to our research community. This month, we are profiling Dr. Pascal Bernatchez, a Principal Investigator with the Centre for Heart Lung Innovation (HLI) and an Associate Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology and Therapeutics at the University of British Columbia.

He has conducted significant research into the health of blood vessels, working to develop medications that enhance the ability of blood vessels to protect themselves against cardiovascular diseases, and revealing how changes in cholesterol metabolism impact muscle health in muscular dystrophy.

"Dr. Bernatchez is an outstanding scientist, translational researcher, and colleague who deploys the full suite of biomedical methods, from discovery and pre-clinical models, through to human clinical trials, in order to better understand endothelial biology and treat blood vessel-related disease,” says Dr. Scott Tebbutt, Director, Research, Providence Research, and Director, Education, HLI. 

Tapping into the hidden capacities of blood vessels

Dr. Bernatchez obtained a Master’s and PhD in Pharmacology at the Montreal Heart Institute and the University of Montreal’s Department of Pharmacology. He trained as a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University, where he studied the self-protective properties of blood vessels, which he believed were being under-utilized. He found that small synthetic chains of amino acids called peptides stimulated the same response in the vascular system as aerobic exercise, which protects against a range of cardiovascular diseases. 

“It became clear to me that these properties need to be developed and refined, and that they could lead to new therapeutic approaches to tap into the hidden capacities of our blood vessels,” says Dr. Bernatchez.

In 2007, he came to the University of British Columbia and the HLI, where the vibrant cardiovascular and cholesterol research community at Providence Research provided collaboration that helped take his findings to the next level.

New perspectives on diseases of the aorta

Dr. Bernatchez’s research into the protective properties of blood vessels uncovered mounting evidence that diseases of the aorta, which affect the main artery carrying blood from the heart, are not caused by high blood pressure, as was previously thought, but by disfunction of the endothelium, the layer of cells lining blood vessels. 

He found that a group of blood pressure-lowering medications commonly used to treat aortic diseases also activate the endothelium and the capacity for blood vessels to protect themselves. These findings, which are currently being tested in an observational study at the Heritable Aortopathies Clinic at St. Paul’s Hospital, could potentially lead to new therapeutic approaches and treatments for these conditions.

Uncovering how cholesterol impacts muscle health

Another of Dr. Bernatchez’s significant discoveries is identifying cholesterol as a link between how muscular dystrophy (MS) causes muscle damage, and muscle pain caused by statin medications.

Studies conducted by him and his team have shown that many people with MS have abnormally high levels of lipids, including cholesterol, known as dyslipidemia. They found that MS interferes with enzymes that regulate cholesterol metabolism, and that cholesterol may actually be a prominent regulator of muscle health. This could help to explain why statins, commonly prescribed medications to lower cholesterol and prevent heart disease, often cause muscle pain as a side effect.

These findings could lead to new treatments for managing chronic muscle diseases, such as using cholesterol-modulating medications to help stabilize weakened muscles in patients with MS.

Developing medications to make cardiovascular diseases a thing of the past

Dr. Bernatchez is motivated in his work as a pharmacologist by the possibility of developing a medication that is fully optimized to stimulate the innate protective properties of blood vessels, enabling treatments that would minimize the impact of cardiovascular diseases.

“I think this concept is under-utilized or under-developed, especially from a clinical perspective. We have a range of collaborators and projects that we hope will allow us to make cardiovascular diseases a thing of the past, by providing new pharmacotherapeutic options,” says Dr. Bernatchez.