The University of Aberdeen has been awarded a major five-year programme grant from the British Heart Foundation, worth just over £1.1million, to drive forward research that could lead to a completely new way of protecting people from heart disease.
The project, led by Aberdeen’s Cardiovascular and Diabetes Centre, will build on their earlier discoveries showing that blocking a key enzyme in immune cells may help reduce the build‑up of fat in the arteries - a process known as atherosclerosis - which causes most heart attacks and strokes.
Atherosclerosis develops when fatty deposits accumulate inside artery walls, often made worse by high cholesterol, obesity, diabetes. Over the past decade, Aberdeen researchers have shown that targeting an enzyme called PTP1B can help ‘block’ this fat‑building process.
Using a drug called Trodusquemine, the team saw the same positive changes in human cells as they had previously observed in mice, including a reduction in levels of ‘bad’ cholesterol. This was a crucial step in showing the approach could work beyond the laboratory, but further research is needed before it can move towards human clinical trials - and the new BHF funding will help make that possible.
It will bring together an international team with partners at the universities of Liverpool, Leeds, Dundee, Copenhagen, Leiden and Nantes exploring whether this approach could benefit people at high risk of heart disease, including those with inherited high cholesterol.
Professor Mirela Delibegovic, Regius Chair in Physiology at the University of Aberdeen will lead the project. She said: “This funding allows us to take an important next step. We’ll be studying this approach in people who are at higher risk of heart disease to see whether it has the potential to move towards future clinical trials. It’s early‑stage work, but if the results are encouraging, it could eventually open the door to a new type of cholesterol‑lowering treatment for people who currently have limited options.”
She says it is vital to study people who are at the highest risk of heart disease, including those with very high cholesterol from a young age, so that future treatments can prevent damage before it begins rather than trying to reverse it later.
“What we want to find out is simple: could this approach one day be tested in clinical trials, and could it offer patients a new way to ‘block’ bad cholesterol from building up and depositing in their arteries?” Professor Delibegovic added.
“If the results are positive, this could eventually lead to a new type of cholesterol‑lowering medicine which could be used either on its own or in combination with statins, and could offer hope to people who don’t respond well to current treatments.”
Professor James Leiper, Director of Research at the British Heart Foundation, said: “Atherosclerosis – a build-up of fatty material in the arteries – is common and can affect anyone. It can raise the risk of having a heart attack or stroke.
“Thanks to decades of research we have effective medicines, like statins, to help protect people. But finding new ways to prevent these fatty build-ups in blood vessels is vital to develop new and potentially even more effective treatments, which is why we are delighted to support this early-stage research.
“We are backing pioneering studies like this because every three minutes, someone in the UK dies from cardiovascular disease, and that must change in the future.”