Investigating the role of the protein BACH1 in preventing blood vessel formation and exploring whether its inhibition can promote new blood vessel growth for patients recovering from a heart attack.
Drug discovery / Therapeutics
A heart attack is caused by a blockage of one or more coronary arteries. This prevents blood and oxygen from reaching the heart muscle, damaging the heart tissue. Treatment for heart attack includes reopening the blocked coronary artery with stents or through angioplasty or bypass surgery. However, there are limitations to these treatments. Reopening coronary arteries is often insufficient to completely repair the heart. More damage can occur in the following days, in some cases leading to the loss of heart function, called heart failure, which is associated with poor quality of life and a high risk of death.
A potential new treatment is to increase the blood flow to damaged heart tissue by using drugs that encourage the body to grow new blood vessels. Professor Madeddu and his team have discovered that the protein BACH1 is involved in controlling blood vessel growth. Too much BACH1 appears to prevent blood vessel formation. This project investigated whether a ‘BACH1 inhibitor’ may be used as a drug to encourage new blood vessel growth and restore blood flow to the heart.
Cells were taken from blood vessels (pericytes and endothelial cells) and treated with a BACH1 inhibitor, which was shown to block the action of BACH1. In the project’s next stage, it was proven that the BACH1 inhibitor encourages blood vessel growth in an animal model and protects the heart pumping function. This represents the first step in developing the BACH1 inhibitor into a drug treatment for heart disease. This means that patients suffering from a heart attack could be treated with a BACH1 inhibitor to accelerate the healing of the heart tissue.
This would result in improved quality of life and reduced risk of developing heart failure. Also, this treatment may benefit people suffering from other diseases where new vessel growth is needed, such as poor blood circulation in the legs, or damage to other organs, such as the kidney, brain, and eyes.
The development of a new AI-supported model for imaging the heart based on data from over 700 people with atrial fibrillation, allow ablation to be more personalised to individual patients.
A trial for every patient
Personalised angina care
Blood clots in acute coronary syndrome
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