Researchers at the University of Illinois have developed a drug that could prevent the risk of heart attack in people at risk without the risk of bleeding blood vessels.
- Tested in mice, a new treatment reduces the risk of bleeding, thus preventing irreversible damage to the heart.
Prescribed to people who have had a cardiac event, antiplatelet agents (APA) are drugs that inhibit platelet functions, and in particular the activation and aggregation of platelets during haemostasis, i.e. the set of mechanisms that stop the flow of blood.
The main side effect of these agents is that they create drug thrombopathy on the platelets, most often irreversible. “Unfortunately, current antiplatelet drugs prevent the blood clotting that causes heart attacks and strokes, but also disrupt platelets’ ability to stop bleeding if a blood vessel is torn.explains Professor Xiaoping Du of the University of Illinois, Chicago (USA), author of a new study published in the journal Science Translational Medicine. In some cases, heavy bleeding can be life-threatening.”
A treatment acting on the coagulation mechanism
Together with his research team, the professor of pharmacology and regenerative medicine has developed a drug that “prevents clots but does not make people prone to bleeding, which other drugs have failed to do”he explained in a press release.
In a previous study, Xiaoping Du and his colleagues identified an important signaling mechanism in the blood clotting process that was not required to make platelets adhere to a wound or to prevent bleeding. Based on this discovery, the researchers derived a peptide capable of targeting the signaling mechanism and designed a nanoparticle that successfully delivered the peptide into platelets.
The drug, based on nanoparticles derived from the peptide — called M3mP6 High Load Peptide Nanoparticles, from HLPN — was then tested in mice as a possible treatment for heart attacks.
Reduced inflammation and bleeding risk
Administered by injection in mice, the drug allowed reduced heart damage, decreased clotting and reduced inflammation. The researchers also found an improvement in heart function and an increased chance of survival.
These results are particularly encouraging because they limit reperfusion injury, i.e. hemorrhage due, after a heart attack, to angioplasty combined with antiplatelet drugs. When heart tissue is damaged, “reopening the artery can trigger inflammation, causing small blood vessels to leak and clot and further damage the heart”, which can lead to the death of the patient. “We hoped that this new drug, which does not leak blood vessels, would help limit reperfusion injury and reduce the risk of heart failure and death, and our hypothesis turned out to be correct. We have seen very promising results from our study,” welcomes Xiaoping Du. New trials will this time be conducted on humans to confirm the effectiveness of the treatment.
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