Coronary heart disease afflicts more than 18 million Americans. A new research project at the University of Iowa could result in safer treatment for many such patients, primarily those receiving stents to improve blood flow to the heart.
An unwanted side effect of using a life-saving stent, is that it can often trigger increased growth of vascular smooth muscle cells near the stent. This cell-growth, in turn, causes a narrowing of blood vessels. This narrowing can pose risks for the patient, including potentially blocking the flow of blood again, known as restenosis.
“Current drugs that prevent restenosis have a problem. While they can stop overgrowth of vascular smooth muscle cells, they can also damage endothelial cells, which are important for keeping blood vessels healthy,” explains Dr. William Thiel, Associate Professor of Internal Medicine at UI’s Carver College of Medicine.
But what if doctors could stop the unwanted cell growth around the stent without causing collateral damage to the other cells that support vascular and heart health?
To that end, Dr. Thiel has partnered with Dr. Rahul Singh, a professor in UI’s Department of Computer Science, and head of its Biocomputing Research Lab, to develop a solution. Together, they hope to test whether they can use a specialized molecule known as an aptamer to prevent stent blockages caused by cell overgrowth.
An aptamer is a single-stranded synthetic DNA or RNA molecule that functions like a chemical antibody, allowing it to deliver medication to only specific cells. Drs. Thiel and Singh will design aptamers that will successfully release growth-suppressing medication exclusively to the vascular smooth muscle cells — stopping their overgrowth without damaging endothelial cells.
Their interdisciplinary team’s proposal recently received a generous grant from the Dr. Ralph and Marian Falk Medical Research Trust Catalyst Award Program, an initiative managed by Health Resources in Action (HRiA).
Their research plan includes designing and testing aptamers that can carry two different types of medicines to exactly where they are needed. “We will design new algorithms for molecular modeling and generative AI methods to create the aptamers,” says Dr. Singh, an expert in biocomputing.
The team also plans to use patient data across different populations to design aptamers that are specifically suited to an individual patient’s health history and condition. “Patients with concurrent health issues, or genetic differences, may respond differently to one aptamer-based treatment versus another,” Singh explains, advocating for the need to assess the data for multiple variables.
From their work, Singh and Thiel also hope to establish a first-of-its-kind repository of patient-derived vasculature-aptamer data that will aid other scientists in future testing and aptamer design for vascular diseases.
The University of Iowa offers an exceptional environment for interdisciplinary work that combines both innovative medical treatments along with data collection and analysis. The University’s computer science and informatics research faculty often work side by side with medical researchers on ground-breaking new discoveries, which is why the University is home for notable researchers in healthcare and biocomputing.