The Montalcino Aortic Consortium (MAC) formed in 2013 around the need for international cooperation in the study of human diseases, largely determined by variation in genes, that affect the aorta and its major branches.
The goals are:
- To improve the diagnostic criteria of a growing list of conditions, now more than two dozen
- To understand the natural and clinical histories of these conditions
- To discover additional genetic variations that predispose to aortopathy
- To discover and test new approaches to treatment
- And to facilitate collaborations in all of these endeavors