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