Infensa’s drug versus current cardiovascular treatments: what’s the difference?

Every minute matters during a heart attack or stroke.

The damage from these events occurs due to a lack of oxygen reaching the heart muscle during a heart attack or the brain during a stroke.

This can result in permanent loss of heart muscle or brain cells, resulting in heart failure or physical and cognitive disability after a stroke, or even death.

Preventing damage versus minimising it

Current treatments, such as clot-busting drugs, focus on restoring blood flow as quickly as possible to minimise this damage.

But there are no treatments on the market that prevent cells adjacent to the initial damage that are still viable but starved of oxygen from dying and, therefore, markedly increasing the amount of tissue damage.

Infensa Bioscience is working to change this.

Professor Bob Graham, a cardiologist-researcher with 50 years of experience in treating patients, says Infensa’s drug candidate would be the first such cardioprotective drug in the world - the first of a new class of drug.

Blocking cell suicide signals

Infensa’s drug candidate doesn’t restore oxygen. Instead, it relies on a disruptive idea – turning off the signals that cause heart or brain cells that are starved of oxygen to die.

Lack of oxygen isn’t solely responsible for the damage from a heart attack or stroke. Instead, it triggers a chain reaction of cellular processes that cause a “suicide signal” to be sent to heart muscle or brain cells that are starved of oxygen.

Exactly how this process worked wasn’t known until recently, when Infensa scientists and other groups identified a protein, acid-sensing ion channel 1a (ASIC1a), that is key to this process.

Infensa scientists then showed that blocking ASIC1a can greatly reduce tissue damage after heart attack and stroke.

Immense potential to save lives

“If results in patients are anywhere as good as in preclinical trials, this drug will have an enormous benefit,” Bob says.

“We will be saving and prolonging lives in many thousands of patients.

“After a heart attack, 50 per cent of patients go on to develop heart failure which, if severe, has a worse prognosis than most cancers.”

It also offers great hope for stroke patients, the majority of whom sustain permanent damage, and transplant patients, where it could be used to prolong the life of donor hearts.

An on-the-spot treatment for a wide range of diseases

The drug candidate is shaping up as a valuable tool that could be given by clinicians or first responders.

“This drug doesn’t bust clots, which in some stroke patients can also cause massive bleeding that may be fatal, so we could give it with impunity,” Bob says.

“If it passes clinical trials, I would eventually like to see it given by paramedics to anyone who is unconscious. It would hopefully markedly improve the survival and longevity of people having any sort of injury involving a lack of oxygen (hypoxia).”

Bob is also enthused by its potential to eventually treat a range of other conditions that involve a loss of oxygen, such as cerebral palsy, muscle crush injuries and retinal detachment.

For now, the team remains focused on advancing the drug candidate as a treatment for heart attack, stroke, and heart transplantation.

With these devastating events responsible for almost 30 per cent of all deaths worldwide, and permanent disability in some survivors, Infensa’s different approach could be a game-changer for patients and clinicians the world over.