New non-invasive therapy or effective reversal of atherosclerosis

Recently, at the 2018 American Heart Association meeting, researchers from the Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine pointed out that in the future, only one injection is needed to reverse atherosclerosis, atherosclerosis. The main feature is the narrowing of the arteries and blood vessels, and the cause of the narrowing of the arteries is the accumulation of cholesterol plaques.

Drugs such as statins can control the level of low-density lipoprotein (LDL, harmful cholesterol), thereby reducing the plaque burden of arterial arteries in patients with atherosclerosis, but statins are not effective in reversing the progression of these diseases . Other means of treating atherosclerosis include bypass surgery and stent implantation, but these methods are not effective in reversing atherosclerosis, but also cause certain damage to the patient's blood vessel wall.

Researcher Mansukhani said that our goal is to develop a new, non-invasive, non-surgical treatment that targets and acts on blood vessels by using nanofiber-based peptides developed in the laboratory to inhibit and reverse disease; These small fiber molecules contain special particles that remove cholesterol deposits from the arterial wall. In the laboratory, the researchers synthesized self-assembling peptide nanofiber materials that target plaque regions, which can be transported by intravenous injection. More importantly, these synthetic engineered nanofibers also contain Some special amino acid sequences that promote the breakdown of cholesterol.

To test this concept, the researchers of mice genetically modified so that it appears atherosclerosis, subsequently the high fat diet feeding time 14 weeks, mice were then injected every two weeks peptide nanofibers or saline for 8 Week time. Researchers say they may be able to study animal models in the lab to get reproducible results, so first they will determine through research whether this new treatment can target atherosclerotic plaque regions. .

After 8 weeks of treatment, the researchers found that the area of ​​arterial plaques in male mice was reduced by 11%, while in female mice by 9%. The results show that this new type of targeted nanofibers can specifically bind to the lesions of the body's atherosclerosis, and this treatment can significantly reduce the body's plaque burden after short-term treatment; It is pointed out that this is only an initial study, and later they need to conduct more in-depth research to confirm the efficacy of this new treatment in the human body.