Angiotech Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and partner Athersys, Inc. announced updated results from its phase I clinical trial of MultiStem®, its allogeneic cell therapy product, administered to individuals following acute myocardial infarction (AMI), commonly referred to as a heart attack. The updated study results were presented at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) Conference held in Washington, D.C. The results demonstrate that MultiStem was well tolerated at all dose levels and suggest improvement in heart function in patients.

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A middle-school teacher was revived after collapsing when a police officer at a Bellevue school on another call helped deploy a defibrillator. As part of a pilot program to improve heart attack survival rates, Bellevue and Kent police officers were issued portable automatic electronic defibrillators and trained in their use in March.

The FDA approves Boehringer Ingelheim’s MICARDIS® (telmisartan) as the first treatment in its class to reduce the risk of heart attack, stroke, or death from cardiovascular causes in patients at high cardiovascular risk who are unable to take ACE inhibitors. This new indication is based on The ONTARGET Trial results which showed that MICARDIS® may prevent one in five serious CV events or death from cardiac causes.

A Dutch study showed that people who took preventive doses of the statin pills, such as Lescol, before and after their operations to get an artery unclogged or repaired were much less likely to die or have a heart attack afterward. Statins are widely prescribed to reduce cholesterol and prevent heart disease.

Researchers have indicated that an enzyme found in coronary plaques may be responsible for significant number of cardiac patients suffering from heart attacks and stroke, despite the widespread use of cholesterol-lowering drugs. The enzyme makes plaque more vulnerable to rupture and block blood flow. According to new research, the drug darapladib, taken in adjunct to the treatment of statin drugs, may offer a way to fight that risk as it safely and effectively lowers the activity of the Lp-PLA2 enzyme.

Photo by Patrick J. Lynch

The FDA has approved Life Recovery Systems’ Investigational Device Exemption (IDE) application to investigate rapid hypothermia treatment in combination with primary angioplasty to treat heart attacks. The patients enrolled in the study will be given hypothermia along with Life Recovery Systems ThermoSuit(R) non-invasive cooling system. The patients will undergo cooling in the emergency room within one hour of their arrival and the door-to-balloon time will not extend beyond 90 minutes.

Drug-coated stents increased the risk of death in certain heart attack patients by nearly five times according to a recent study presented at the meeting of the European Society of Cardiology in Vienna. “Patients are now very wary about these stents,” lead researcher Gabriel Steg said. “Personally, I don’t use these stents in heart attack patients any longer.”

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