BY LAW JIA JUIN
Heart disease reflects a national and international epidemic as a source of significant morbidity, mortality, and cost. There is a demand for more cost-effective alternatives to managing the outcomes of heart disease.As such, there has been an increase in alternative noninvasive techniques to treat heart disease. One area of current research is the stimulation of angiogenesis within the heart, which would provide a bypassing mechanism for obstructed blood vessels. Stimulation of angiogenesis would effectively increase the collateral blood flow for patients with a cardiac blood flow deficiency.
There is 1 agent currently in phase III trials that promotes angiogenesis within cardiac tissue. Under development by Cardium Therapeutics, Generx, also called alferminogene tadenovec (Ad5FGF-4), is a fibroblast growth factor (FGF) that has been shown to stimulate angiogenesis in multiple types of tissues.In one of the first published trials examining the impact of FGF, which was derived from genetically modified Escherichia coli, on myocardial tissue of patients undergoing bypass surgery, Schumacher et al found that after 12 weeks of FGF administration, patients demonstrated an increase in the number of myocardial capillaries. But impact of this treatment was localized to the injection site during surgery and clinical outcomes were not evaluated.
No comments:
Post a Comment