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Imagine: an injection that can cure…heart failure? If successful, it’s a revolution: almost 600,000 lives could be saved every year in the United States alone.
This is what my friend (and former Reagan and Bush Director of Policy Planning) Jim Pinkerton calls “The Cure Strategy“: applying a Silicon Valley-like approach to eliminating the things that ail us through technological advance, instead of what we might call “the Congressional Budget Office Strategy,” seemingly infecting both parties, which focuses on cost containment and triage. After all, if everyone doesn’t die young, how will Social Security stay solvent?
These scientists get it. So maybe I’ll have that Big Mac after all.
Pioneering New Injection to Cure Heart Failure without Need for Major Surgery
by Sarah Knapton
Telegraph UK
August 12, 2014
A pioneering new treatment that allows damaged hearts to recover without the need for major surgery is being trialled by one of Britain’s leading medical institutions.
The technique, which involves a simple injection, could aid the recovery of hundreds of thousands of heart failure patients. Heart transplants could even be consigned to history thanks to a trial by Imperial College, London, which aims to show for the first time that gene therapy could repair failing organs.
Almost 500,000 people in Britain suffer from heart failure, with hundreds of patients requiring new hearts. Around 200 transplants take place in Britain each year. But two out of 10 people will die awaiting an organ due to severe shortages of donors.
The trial involves researchers introducing a gene, created in a laboratory, into heart failure patients to boost the production of a key protein, which they believe will allow the muscle to recover.
Researchers say the treatment could offer a “viable alternative” to transplantation. The British Heart Foundation, which is funding the trial, said the discovery “offers genuine hope of an effective treatment in the near future”.
Dr Nick Banner, the consultant cardiologist at Harefield Hospital in north London, who carried out the first infusion of the new gene therapy, said: “Advanced heart failure is a progressive condition that results in a poor quality of life and shortened life expectancy.
“The best treatment currently available is a heart transplant but the shortage of donor organs in the UK means that many patients will die on the transplant waiting list. Mechanical pumps can keep some patients alive long enough for a donor heart to become available.
“The rationale for this study is to investigate the effectiveness of a new form of therapy, which might in the future be a viable alternative to transplantation.
“This study will help us better understand whether the concept of repairing a heart with gene therapy might be possible, even in patients with advanced heart failure.” Heart failure usually occurs after damage or disease, and causes the heart to become progressively weaker at pumping blood as its cells become overstressed and begin to malfunction.
It can be brought on by high blood pressure; damage to arteries caused by alcohol or smoking; weak heart muscles caused by genetic defects; or infections.
In many cases heart failure is caused by damage after a heart attack, where heart muscle and other tissue dies because its blood supply is cut off.
Some patients with advanced heart failure are fitted with a Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD), a mechanical pump that supports the failing heart and aims to restore normal blood flow.
The pump moves the blood from the left ventricle into the main artery (the aorta) so it can circulate the oxygen-rich blood to the rest of the body.
Currently there are about 100 to 150 people in the UK living with a pump but they are heavy and cumbersome and patients struggle to bathe or sleep while wearing the battery packs.
The new therapy is designed to increase levels of SERCA2a, a protein in heart muscle cells that plays an important role in heart muscle contraction.
In the new treatment, genes are pumped into the heart muscle cells to increase the level of SERCA2a using a harmless engineered virus that will spread in the organ and help repair the damaged muscle so it can pump on its own.
Previous studies have shown that the technique works in animals and on hearts in a laboratory. Now human trials are to begin.
The team plans to take small biopsy samples of the heart muscle six months after treatment to measure if the gene is present, detectable and functional in the patients’ hearts.
Of the 24 patients enrolled in the study, 16 will be treated with the gene therapy and eight will be treated with a placebo.
“We will be using state-of-the art methods to gain detailed information on how and where the gene therapy takes effect, which will potentially help us develop and improve the therapy,” said Sian Harding, professor of cardiac pharmacology and head of the British Heart Foundation’s Centre of Regenerative Medicine at Imperial College London.
“It’s important to remember that the therapy is not correcting a gene defect,” Prof Harding added.
“We are working much more downstream, which means that no matter what the cause of the heart failure, the therapy should be equally beneficial for patients whether their heart problems stem from genes, lifestyle or the environment or a mixture of all of these.”
Prof Peter Weissberg, Medical Director at the BHF, said: “Heart failure devastates the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the UK. Despite major advances in treating heart attacks, we’re still some way off a treatment that restores function in hearts damaged by one. This cutting-edge trial offers genuine hope of an effective treatment in the near future.”
Rod is one of our nation’s leading minds. He’s smart, original, and very committed—a combination that one rarely finds.
Rod Martin and [former Howard Dean campaign manager] Joe Trippi are America’s two foremost experts on online politics.
Rod Martin is a Reaganite-Thatcherite conservative…[and] a man who has spent much of his life ministering to and working for the benefit of others. I know Rod as an advocate for freedom, a leader who understands the real changes we need in Washington, and who has the drive and ability to make those changes happen.
Rod Martin is the kind of dynamic leader who has the knowledge, ability and experience to lead us successfully into the 21st Century. His vision for America is compelling.
Rod Martin literally wrote the book on excellence. Humble yet brilliant, a man of love and compassion, with penetrating clarity he illuminates the world around us, and we are both stirred and enlightened.
Rod Martin is a born leader and an outstanding political mind. Anyone who takes him on is going to have a serious fight on their hands.
Rod Martin is a man of uncommon vision and character. Ever since I first worked alongside Rod in the early days of PayPal, I’ve been struck by his powerful vision for the future. Rod understands the intersection of technology, politics and culture in a way that few others do.
Rod Martin wears with uncommon grace an uncanny ability to link his vigorous faith to the practical challenges of both the business world and the political arena. Yet the respect he shows for others carries a warmth and modesty that are both too rare among those who are strong advocates of feisty positions.
America badly needs more leaders who really get the future. We need more Rod Martins.
Rod Martin is a modern day philosopher-statesman. He is a capitalist intellectual, a conservative iconoclast, a gentle adversary and a kind prophet. He inspires us towards a fresh national vision built upon the original founding principles.
Rod Martin is not only effective and efficient, but he is also perceptive, wise and gracious. He gets things done. He is a great friend and a great ally.
Rod is one of the sharpest, most gracious men I know, and one of the most gifted political thinkers today. His ability to analyze issues and communicate thoughtful insights on them have earned him the respect of people across the political spectrum.
I am proud to have been Rod Martin’s friend for a quarter century, and I can tell you that he is one of the finest men and most outstanding leaders in our church and in our country today. He has a knack for turning everything he touches to success.
Rod Martin is a cornucopian entrepreneur and eutropic thinker whose influence radiates through an array of companies, institutions, movements and churches. A renaissance American, he is also a prolific friend of freedom and faith around the globe.
If Rod Martin represents the next generation of leaders, America has nothing to worry about.
A leader and a servant, in public life and in private, Rod Martin strides at the top of his profession, and has nowhere to go but up. He is in the truest sense of the word ‘outstanding’.
Rod Martin is undoubtedly one of the most accomplished thought leaders today. He is a wonderful mentor, a humble role model, and a deep inspiration for the next generation of scientific innovators and entrepreneurs.
Rod’s achievements pale beside his character and his brilliance. He sees what others can’t. He leads when others won’t.
Rod Martin is one of America’s finest young minds.
