News

The Laboratory for Cardiovascular Diseases, in collaboration with Human Genome Center at University of Tokyo's Institute of Medical Science, Department of Internal Medicine and Therapeutics at Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine, and Kokura Memorial Hospital, has identified a gene encoding galectin-2 as associated with myocardial infarction, through a case-control association study using SNPs which followed investigations into protein interactions.
We previously revealed that one gene, lymphotoxin-alpha (LTA), encoding a molecule involved in inflammation, was genetically associated with myocardial infarction. In this research, we discovered galectin-2 was a binding partner of LTA. We then elucidated that galectin-2 gene is associated with the onset of myocardial infarction by investigating SNPs in the gene encoding this gene followed by a case-control association study. We showed that reduced galectin-2 expression suppressed extracellular secretion of LTA.
These findings were published in the May 6 2004 issue of the British scientific magazine "Nature".