IG16225 - IMproving Preclinical Assessment of Cardioprotective Therapies

Acute myocardial infarction and the heart failure that often follows are among the leading causes of death and disability in Europe and worldwide. New treatments are therefore needed to protect the heart muscle from acute ischaemia/reperfusion injury, to reduce myocardial infarct size, to preserve heart contractile function and to prevent the onset of heart failure. However, although many novel cardioprotective therapies have been reported to reduce myocardial infarct size in pre-clinical animal studies, their translation into the clinical setting for patient benefit has been disappointing. In this regard, this CIG application will build-on and extend the most innovative findings arising from our successful EU-CARDIOPROTECTION COST Action CA16225 by leveraging on our newly established and validated small and large animal acute myocardial infarction research networks to test and investigate the cardioprotective effects of two innovative novel cardioprotective interventions. The first of these are SGLT2 inhibitors which have been shown to improve cardiovascular outcomes in both diabetic and non-diabetic patients. Whether these drugs confer cardioprotection following AMI has not been fully established and the mechanisms underlying their cardiovascular protective effects remain unclear. The second of these is an innovative multi-targeted combination treatment directed to both inflammation and coronary microvascular obstruction, key mediators of acute myocardial ischaemia/reperfusion injury. This collaborative multicentre approach to pre-clinical evaluation of novel cardioprotective interventions is highly innovative and would be expected to improve the translation of cardioprotection into the clinical setting for patient benefit as only the most robust agents would be tested in patients. Furthermore, the new AMI networks will be attractive to Academic collaborators and Pharmaceutical and Medical Technology industry partners to evaluate their novel cardioprotective interventions in a multicentre research AMI network.