Index
07 November 2011
'Sticky' heart study wins $373,000
RMIT University researchers have been awarded a $373,000 National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) grant for a study to help reduce the number of heart attacks and strokes.
Professor Peter Little AM.
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Professor Peter Little AM, who was awarded the funds with Dr Narin Osman, said cardiovascular disease was the largest single cause of premature morbidity and mortality, with the disease more severe and of earlier onset in people with diabetes.
He said the best drugs, cholesterol-lowering statins, prevented only 30 per cent of heart attacks.
Professor Little is the Foundation Head, Discipline of Pharmacy and Group Leader, Diabetes Complications Group, in RMIT's Health Innovations Research Institute.
"Our studies are aimed at discovering new targets and then helping to develop drugs for the treatment and prevention of cardiovascular disease," he said.
The current NHMRC project has outcomes at both scientific and medical levels.
At a scientific level the project concerns the way that hormones interact with cells.
"At a medical level we will look at materials that occupy the space between cells in a blood vessel," Professor Little said.
"When this material becomes stickier it leads to the binding and trapping of cholesterol in the blood vessel wall as the initiating step in hardening of the arteries, which underlies the major cardiovascular diseases of heart attacks and strokes.
"The identification of underlying mechanisms will allow for the subsequent development of drugs to prevent cardiovascular disease."
Professor Little said the ultimate outcome of this work would be the development of a drug which would be used in combination with the current gold standard, the statin drugs that lower cholesterol.
"One drug would reduce blood cholesterol levels and the other would reduce the stickiness of the blood vessel wall to prevent cholesterol deposition," he said.
