Dr Helle Jørgensen

Atherosclerosis causes death by heart attack and stroke, and has vast socio-economic consequences. Targeting arterial cells to stabilise disease represents unexplored territory, that would complement current risk factor-reducing approaches. In particular, vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) are enriched for coronary artery disease GWAS signals and generate the majority of cells in atherosclerotic lesions. The Jorgensen Team aims to identify mechanisms regulating VSMCs that can be leveraged for disease treatment and prevention. 

Helle Jorgensen is an Associate Professor at the University of Cambridge. Her group studies how vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) plasticity and heterogeneity is regulated in vascular health and disease. Her team has demonstrated that a small number of pre-existing VSMC undergo extensive proliferative expansion to generate a large number of cell in atherosclerotic lesions and that similar clonal expansion is a hallmark of other vascular disease models. Using single cell transcriptome profiling, the group has revealed substantial VSMC heterogeneity both in lesions and in healthy arteries. These findings have implication for the understanding of VSMC behaviour and how selective targeting of disease-associated VSMC could be translated to the clinic.

Helle was awarded a PhD in molecular biology from Aarhus University in 2000 (Prof Brian Clarke). During her postdoctoral training she studied DNA-methylation-binding factors under the mentorship of Prof Sir Adrian Bird (University of Edinburgh) and investigated how transcription factors and epigenetic mechanisms control embryonic stem cell maintenance and cell fate choices (Prof Dame Amanda G Fisher, London Institute of Medical Research). 

ORCID: 0000-0002-7909-2977