Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute finds new approach can reduce major blood vessel swelling

A NEW approach from Melbourne’s Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, in which tiny bubbles full of drugs that track and latch on to sick cells, has been used in preclinical trials to stop the heart’s biggest pipe from bursting.

TINY bubbles full of drugs that track and latch on to sick cells have been used to stop the heart’s biggest pipe from bursting in preclinical trials of an experimental treatment.

Melbourne’s Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute found their new approach can reduce swelling in the major blood vessel that supplies blood to the body.

The condition, known as an abdominal aortic aneurysm, causes the vessel, around the thickness of a garden hose, to balloon and burst.

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Without surgery, the consequences can be catastrophic.

Lead author Professor Xiaowei Wang said their technique could become the first non-surgical treatment for the ­condition.

More than 4600 Australians are hospitalised with ­abdominal aortic aneurysm each year, and about 1000 die.

Co-author Amy Searle said the condition often had silent symptoms, such as pain in the back and abdomen, so many people were unaware they suffered from it until the vessel ruptured.

She said they made a “smart microbubble” using an antibody that recognised where the aneurysm was in the stomach and bound to it.

“When we burst the microbubble it delivers the gene therapy into the dysfunctional cells lining the aneurysm and the gene therapy tells these cells to stop causing the inflammation.”

In a paper published in Molecular Therapy the mice who received the therapy had a significant reduction in their aneurysm severity compared with the animals who did not have it.

The therapy still needs to undergo further preclinical testing before progressing to human trials, which means it is still up to 10 years away from being available to patients.

Men are more at risk of AAA, as well as those aged over 65, smokers and those with a family history.

Routine screening of elderly patients occurs in the US and UK, but not in Australia.

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