Researchers developed a polymer-based therapy that can be injected following a heart attack that helps heart tissue heal. After administering it to rats, they demonstrated that it works up to five weeks later, they reported in the journal Advanced Materials.
Heart attacks are a major health issue in the U.S., with about 805,000 people a year experiencing them — the equivalent of one every 40 seconds. About 12 percent of people who experience a heart attack will die from it.
“Preventing heart failure after a heart attack is still a major unmet clinical need,” Karen Christman, a bioengineering professor at the University of California, Davis and an author of the study, said in a press release. “The goal of this therapy is to intervene very soon after someone suffers a heart attack to keep them from ultimately going into heart failure.”
Repairing and Keeping Heart Cells Alive
The therapy appears to act on two fronts. It triggers the immune system to encourage tissue repair. It also helps keep heart muscle cells alive following a heart attack.
The therapy takes a molecularly clever approach. The injected polymer mimics a protein that, as part of a reaction to stress and inflammation, binds to one that normally kicks of the process that degrades tissues. The protein Nrf2 “turns on” when cells are stressed. But in some serious situations — like heart attacks — another protein called KEAP1 binds to it, and cells and tissues continue to degrade. The protein-like-polymer (PLP) the researchers injected into the rats mimic Nfr2.
Read More: Repairing the Damage After a Heart Attack
Modelling Heart Attacks
The researchers tested the polymer on rats that were modelled to mimic the cellar conditions following a heart attack. One set of rodents received the PLP solution. Another set took a shot of saline solution. The researchers did not know what rats got which injection.
Five weeks later, the researchers performed MRIs on the sedated rodents. The rats who got the PLP injection showed better cardiac function and significantly more healing in their heart muscle tissues compared to the saline-injected rats. Gene expression tests also showed that the genes involved in tissue healing were turned on at a higher level in the PLP-treated rats versus the controls.
Potentially Broader Applications
The researchers stress that this treatment is still in proof of concept stage. They will next try to improve the PLP’s design and determine the effects of different dosages. After that, they will test the injection on larger mammals. If that research goes well, the treatment could advance into human clinical trials — often a long, tortuous process.
However, Nathan Gianneschi, who developed the PLP while at University of California San Diego and is now a professor at Northwestern University, said that, if those tests are successful, the treatment could be used to heal multiple kinds of tissues — not just ones damaged during heart attacks.
“This therapeutic platform has tremendous potential for several diseases, including everything from macular degeneration to multiple sclerosis and kidney disease,” Gianneschi said in a press release.
This article is not offering medical advice and should be used for informational purposes only.
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Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
Advanced Materials. Protein-Like Polymers Targeting Keap1/Nrf2 as Therapeutics for Myocardial Infarction
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Heart Disease Facts
Healthline. Heart Disease: Facts, Statistics, and You
Before joining Discover Magazine, Paul Smaglik spent over 20 years as a science journalist, specializing in U.S. life science policy and global scientific career issues. He began his career in newspapers, but switched to scientific magazines. His work has appeared in publications including Science News, Science, Nature, and Scientific American.
