New funding for research may lead to better treatments for heart failure
Wednesday, 07 August 2013
Professor Angela Clerk and her team
ÔÇÿwe all aim to bring new therapies to the clinic in the coming few yearsÔÇÖ
University of Reading researchers have been awarded funding by national charity Heart Research UK to discover new ways of treating heart failure.
Studies show that nearly 80,000 people a year die from heart disease in the UK with more than 750,000 people in the country living with heart failure.
During a heart attack heart muscle cells can die if deprived of oxygen. As they are unable to regenerate, some of the heart's function is lost and heart failure develops. So finding new ways to help cells survive or to replace the dead cells, perhaps by helping surviving cells to multiply or by giving extra cells such as stem cells, would be a great step forward in the treatment of heart disease.
The £114,500 funding from Heart Research UK will allow the Cardiac Signalling Team, based at the University's Institute of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Research, to find out why and how heart muscle cells do not divide and instead choose to die. This work could lead to new treatments for heart failure and allow the heart tissue to regenerate.
Professor Angela Clerk, from the University's School of Biological Sciences, said: "I am absolutely delighted that Heart Research UK have chosen to support this groundbreaking research. Our team have been one of many globally that have worked on individual key enzymes in the heart over 20 years, but this research will enable us to look at all 300 plus kinases for the first time ever. This is good news for current sufferers as we all aim to bring new therapies to the clinic in the coming few years."