Why focus on the vascular system?
The vascular system is the body's conduit for blood, oxygen, nutrients, wastes and the complex biochemical signaling system that regulates most physiologic processes. With the exception of the electrical impulses that characterize nerve and muscle activity, virtually everything that happens in the body does so because of the transit of substances through the vascular system. Nearly all major chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease, stroke, rheumatoid arthritis and cancer, depend on cellular and sub-cellular interactions that occur in the vascular system. This makes it an ideal place to intercept and modify fundamental physiologic processes, whether normal ones, like clotting and inflammation, or abnormal ones, like cancer cell proliferation or atherosclerosis. Encysive Pharmaceuticals's expertise in vascular physiology and biochemistry thus positions us to discover a very broad range of novel disease targets.