Rajesh Kharbanda

The focus of our work is on understanding ischemia-reperfusion injury and how this can be reduced particularly by remote preconditioning. In addition to understanding heart muscle responses, we are also interested in blood vessel injury, particularly the microcirculation.

We have developed a number of models to study ischemia-reperfusion injury in humans including ex-vivo and in-vivo models of blood vessels and heart tissue, and clinical studies such as in patients with heart attack or undergoing surgery.  These allow us to understand the mechanisms of ischemia-reperfusion injury and how we might be able to intervene to optimise results from reperfusion treatments. These findings are relevant to both the heart and the brain.

The ongoing areas of research are related to clinical studies of remote conditioning in patients with heart attack, investigation of the role of adenosine in remote preconditioning pathways, and targetting the microcirculation after heart attack treatment to improve outcomes.