Patients with coronary heart disease - the biggest killer in the UK - could receive new arteries made-to-order instead of going through invasive surgery thanks to a recent biological breakthrough.
Scientists have discovered a method for growing arteries, as reported in the April issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, that will give sufferers an alternative to the traditional treatment. “Successfully growing new arteries could provide a biological option for patients facing bypass surgery,” says Michael Simons, lead author of the findings and Chief of the Section of Cardiology at Yale School of Medicine.
In the UK, one in every four men and one in every six women die from the disease, and it causes around 300,000 heart attacks each year, according to the National Health Service.
Up to now, the vast majority of patients have undergone artery bypass surgery, where surgeons “get around” the problem area by grafting a blood vessel between the aorta and a point beyond the narrowed area. Attempts have already been made to develop replacement ateries using growth facts in the past, but they have always been unsuccessful.
However, Simons and his team have found a successful way to stimulate arterial formation by switching on and off two signaling pathways: ERK1/2 and PI3K. “We found that there is cross-talk between the two signaling pathways. One half of the signaling pathway inhibits the other. When we disable the inhibitor mechanism, we are able to grow arteries,” Simons says. “Instead of using growth factors, we stopped the inhibitor mechanism by using a drug that targets a particular enzyme called PI3-kinase inhibitor. Because we’ve located this inhibitory pathway, this opens up the possibility of developing a new class of medication to grow new arteries.The next step is to test this finding in a human clinical trial.”