New Angiostimulator for Ischemic Heart Disease

描述（申请人提供）：治疗性血管生成是缺血性心脏病的一种新的实验方法。它的作用是诱导心肌缺血区域侧支血管的生长。目前，血管生成治疗主要集中在血管生成蛋白如DEL-1、VEGF和FGF的基因治疗上。除了面临基因治疗特有的挑战外，这些内源性蛋白以前从未被用作药物，它们对人类的功效和副作用也不完全清楚。在这里，我们提出了一种不同的治疗血管生成的方法，从传统上用于治疗心血管疾病的药用植物中分离出一种新的血管刺激小分子。我们已经将该化合物纯化到均匀性，并在体外证明了其血管刺激活性，现在建议在小鼠后肢缺血模型中进一步测试其治疗缺血性心脏病的潜在效用。如果成功，该项目将继续在II期进一步开发该血管刺激剂，并可能产生首个用于缺血性疾病治疗性血管生成的非基因小分子候选药物。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Therapeutic angiogenesis is a new experimental approach to ischemic heart disease. It consists on inducing the growth of collateral blood vessels in ischemic areas of the myocardium. Currently, therapeutic angiogenesis focuses on gene therapy with angiogenic proteins such as DEL-1, VEGF and FGF. Besides facing challenges specific to gene therapy, these endogenous proteins have never before been used as drugs, and their efficacy and side effects in humans are not fully understood. Here, we propose a different approach to therapeutic angiogenesis with a novel angiostimulatory small molecule isolated from a medicinal plant traditionally used for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases. We have purified this compound to homogeneity, demonstrated its angiostimulatory activity ex vivo and now propose to further test its potential utility for the treatment of ischemic heart disease in the mouse hind limb ischemia model. If successful, this project will continue with further development of this angiostimulator in Phase II, and may result in the first non-gene, small-molecule drug candidate for the therapeutic angiogenesis in ischemic diseases.