American Physiology Society early career award for Dr. Darren DeLorey

Dr. Darren DeLorey has been awarded a 2009 International Early Career Physiology Travel Award by The American Physiology Society (APS), one of the world's premiere professional bodies representing life sciences research.

For DeLorey, whose research focuses on how things like exercise, gender and age affect the function of the cardiovascular system, the award is welcome recognition of his contribution to science.

While the award itself is modest - $500 to offset the cost of traveling to conferences - DeLorey says, "I'm glad that reviewers felt that early in my career (within the first 10 years) I'd made some meaningful contributions to science, and that they've reviewed the abstract that I'll be presenting at the (Experimental Biology) meeting favourably. I'm pleased that they thought it was quality science and worthy of the award."

APS, a member of the Federation of American Societies of Experimental Biology (FASEB) makes approximately 15 awards of different types at the annual Experimental Biology meeting, the international early career award among them.

To put that in perspective, with an attendance of up to 10,000 delegates, this is the largest experimental biology meeting in the world, so this is high praise indeed for a young researcher.

DeLorey will present his paper, "Non-adrenergic receptor mediated tonic vasoconstriction in skeletal muscle does not change with age" at the Society's Experimental Biology meeting to be held April 18 - 22 in New Orleans.

This paper, the result of a year-long study, looks at how a specific group of receptors involved in controlling blood vessel tone are affected by aging.

Ultimately, says DeLorey, "Vascular smooth muscle tone is regulated by a balance between metabolic vasodilation and sympathetic nervous system vasoconstriction. Vasoconstriction is achieved through the interaction between a sympathetic neurotransmitter and its associated receptor on vascular smooth muscle. Traditionally, explains DeLorey, "It was believed that vasoconstriction was mediated entirely by the neurotransmitter epinephrine binding to adrenergic receptors. Recent evidence however, indicates that the picture is far more complicated and involves multiple neurotransmitters and receptors."

What is new about this study is that it is among the first to investigate the effects of aging on some of these other neurotransmitters and receptors involved in controlling vascular tone."

"The underlying physiological question here is that as we get older vascular resistance tends to increase and that has been associated with an increased prevalence of chronic disease and an altered cardiovascular response to physiological stressors, such as exercise. In this study, we attempted to identify the mechanism for the age-associated increase in vascular resistance and decline in skeletal muscle blood flow at rest and during exercise. We hypothesized that non-adrenergic-receptor-mediated vasoconstriction may assume a proportionally greater role in the control of skeletal muscle vascular tone with advancing age."

The results weren't what DeLorey and his team had been expecting, however: "The surprising finding was that, contrary to what we had hypothesized, non-adrenergic-receptor-mediated vasoconstriction appeared to be unaffected by aging."

Despite the current study not explaining the age-related changes in vascular control it remains an important finding as it furthers our understanding of the basic physiological mechanisms involved in the effects of aging on vascular function.

DeLorey and his graduate students will continue to investigate the basic physiological mechanisms involved in the regulation of skeletal muscle vascular tone and how this regulation is impacted by aging, regular physical activity, inactivity and oxidative stress.