UA researcher files for patent for heart-failure treatment

By Eric Schwartz

Mar. 19, 2008 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) --
A University of Arizona researcher has filed for a patent for a treatment that may help slow or even stop fatal heart failure -- and provides strong scientific evidence that cardiovascular health is a function of the immune system.

The patent was filed by Ronald Watson, a professor of public health and the interim director of the Division of Health Promotion Sciences in the College of Public Health. He also is a professor of family and community medicine at the College of Medicine and a member of the UA Sarver Heart Center.

The human immune system decreases in efficiency and effectiveness as people age. When heart failure occurs, it can distend the heart from a healthy shape to a more spherical form, which impairs its ability to pump blood effectively.

The damage to the organ's tissue also is debilitating. Even if patients survive, their decline ultimately will continue, and current treatments "improve symptoms without increasing life span," said Douglas Larson, professor of surgery, pharmacology and toxicology at the Sarver Heart Center.

Larson, who acted as the "heart expert" for the research, has long been a proponent of examining the relationship of cardiovascular health to the immune system, despite more researchers also looking at other systems, such as the endocrine system and the nervous system, which he said "all the drugs are targeting now" for answers.

"The immune system has an important role in heart disease," Watson said.

Five million Americans are affected by heart failure, with another 550,000 added to the list every year, Larson said.

Half of those affected die within five years, Watson said.

His answer is a peptide -- a string of amino acids -- which will earn him his second patent.

His first, earned about a decade ago, also was for the peptide, for use in models of patients with AIDS. It was used in an experiment in which Watson helped treat mice with AIDS.

The treatment improves the immune system -- weakened by aging and related factors such as a lifetime of absorbed chemicals -- to a healthier state.

In heart-failure cases, the treatment "slows down muscle deterioration" occurring in the damaged heart, Watson said. It helps to prevent the heart from becoming too distended and returns it "to a more healthy geometry," Larson said, which will "arrest the terminal phase of heart failure."

Testing in mice so far has had positive results. A group in Phoenix is now testing the peptide in other animals for effectiveness in treating heart failure and other diseases.

"If it works in animals, we're encouraged to test in humans," Watson said.

However, he and Larson warn that making the peptide available for humans is a long process fraught with pitfalls.

Testing for use in animals is much less strict, and Watson said the treatment could be used by veterinarians within a few years.

While there may be a relationship between the immune system and heart health (OOTC:HHEA) , "we don't know all the mechanisms," Watson said.

This experiment "strengthens the evidence," Larson said.

He expects the field of scientists investigating the subject to grow. This scientific evidence backs up the "strong logical sense" that healing the heart after heart failure should be a function of the immune system rather than the endocrine system, Larson said.

He compared it to getting a cut. The immune system handles healing the skin, and that logic would apply to any other injury, including the heart.

This is the first patent to come from a member of the College of Public Health. In 2007, the UA filed for about 18 patents, Watson said.

He plans to continue and expand his research, including inputting the peptide in models of arthritis patients.

DID YOU KNOW

Doctors in Tucson have a long history of fixing hearts.

Launched in 1979 by renowned heart surgeon Dr. Jack G. Copeland, University Medical Center's heart-transplant program has long boasted one of the best survival rates in the world, after performing more than 800 transplants.

University of Arizona researchers also pioneered the new chest-compression-only method of cardiopulmonary resuscitation, already credited with saving more victims of sudden cardiac arrest.

--Contact NASA Space Grant intern Eric Schwartz at 807-8012 or at eschwartz@azstarnet.com.

Newstex ID: KRTB-0014-23878785