IRISH TIMES HEALTH
Monday 14th October
June Shannon
CAMOUFLAGE FOR CARDIOVASCULAR STENTS
Scientists at NUI Galway are to lead a €1.2 million EU project which aims to reduce re-narrowing of arteries and the need for further interventions by developing novel cardiovascular stents coated in antibodies to improve biocompatibility and effectiveness.
NUI Galway’s microbiology department together with its Network of Excellence for Functional Biomaterials (NFB), a Science Foundation Ireland funded strategic research cluster, will head the four year project.
According to NUI Galway microbiologist Dr Gerard Wall, PHD, who is leading the project, “about half of all deaths from cardiovascular disease are due to coronary artery disease, which occurs when the coronary arteries become hardened and narrowed due to the build-up of plaques on their inner walls or lining.
“This EU project brings together researchers from important medical device clusters in Ireland and Poland involved at all stages of the stint design and development pipeline, to develop a novel product to reduce restenosis, which is one of the major current limitations of stent performance.
“Our plan is to create a new type of coating on the stents using human antibody fragments,” Dr wall explained.
“Once the stent is in place, we hope these antibodies will attract a layer of the patient’s own epithelial cells. This should effectively camouflage the stent as far as the body is concerned, and it will no longer be such a foreign object. Our theory is that this will reduce the potential for rejection, the level of clot build-up, and also significantly improve the long-term outcome of surgical interventions.”
The project brings together three academic partners NUI Galway, and Poland’s Wroclaw University of Technology and Wroclaw Medical University. These are joined by Vornia, a Galway based start up biomedical company and the multi-national stent manufacturer Balton, which has its headquarters in Poland.
The project is funded under the Marie Curie Industry-Academia Partnerships and Pathways (IAPP) scheme of the EU’s fp7 2012 People Work Programme. The programme will provide cross-sectoral research training, career development opportunities and knowledge sharing pathways to 16 researchers involved in the project, in addition to hosting networking and dissemination events open to 30-40 additional researchers in the partner groups.
“The project is an excellent example of the importance of strong industry-academia cooperation in the development of commercially viable products,” added Dr Wall.
“Both university and industry-based researchers will spend considerable time working in the opposite work sector during the project as both sectors recognize that genuine partnership in this manner is the best way to nurture creative research ideas into leading edge products that have unmet clinical need”.