Year: 2022

Scientists in the UK have infused blood cells grown in a laboratory into people in the first such clinical trial in the world. If proven safe and effective, manufactured blood cells could in time revolutionise treatments for people with blood disorders such as sickle cell and rare blood types, the researchers said.

It can be difficult to find enough well-matched donated blood for some people with these disorders, they said.

The team, including researchers from the University of Cambridge in the UK, said the blood cells were grown from stem cells from donors. The red cells were then transfused into healthy volunteers.

This is the first time in the world that red blood cells that have been grown in a laboratory have been given to another person as part of a trial into blood transfusion, they said.

“We hope our lab grown red blood cells will last longer than those that come from blood donors,” said chief investigator Cedric Ghevaert, a professor at the University of Cambridge and NHS Blood and Transplant.

“If our trial, the first such in the world, is successful, it will mean that patients who currently require regular long-term blood transfusions will need fewer transfusions in future, helping transform their care,” Ghevaert said in a statement.

The trial is studying the lifespan of the lab grown cells compared with infusions of standard red blood cells from the same donor.

The lab-grown blood cells are all fresh, so the trial team expect them to perform better than a similar transfusion of standard donated red cells, which contains cells of varying ages, the researchers said.

If manufactured cells last longer in the body, patients who regularly need blood may not need transfusions as often, reducing iron overload from frequent blood transfusions, which can lead to serious complications, they said.

“This challenging and exciting trial is a huge stepping stone for manufacturing blood from stem cells,” said Ashley Toye, a professor at the University of Bristol.

“This is the first-time lab grown blood from an allogeneic donor has been transfused and we are excited to see how well the cells perform at the end of the clinical trial,” Toye said.

For the foreseeable future, manufactured cells could only be used for a very small number of patients with very complex transfusions needs, the researchers said.             Source: PTI

Long-term exposure to air pollution is associated with additional risk of cardiovascular disorders in those already having an underlying heart condition, according to a study. The research, published recently in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), evaluated the association between long-term exposure to small particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5) and 10 (PM10), and coronary vasomotor disorders in patients with nonobstructive coronary artery disease (NOCAD), which is associated with poor cardiovascular outcomes.

Coronary vasomotor disorders are characterised by impaired ability to adequately adjust coronary blood flow to oxygen demand due to dysfunctional vasomotor function. The researchers from Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Rome, Italy and colleagues studied patients with myocardial ischemia and NOCAD undergoing coronary angiography and intracoronary provocation test, an established method for assessment of coronary artery spasm.

Both patients with chronic myocardial ischemia and nonobstructive coronary arteries and myocardial infarction with nonobstructive coronary arteries (MINOCA) were enrolled.

Based on each case’s home address, exposure to PM2.5 and PM10 was assessed.

The study included 287 patients with a median age of 62 years. 149 of the participants were male and 161 had myocardial ischemia and nonobstructive coronary arteries while 126 had MINOCA.

Higher exposure to PM2.5 and PM10 in patients with myocardial ischemia and NOCAD is associated with coronary vasomotor abnormalities, the researchers said. In particular, PM2.5 is an independent risk factor for the occurrence of epicardial spasm and MINOCA as clinical presentation, they said.

“Our study shows for the first time an association between long-term air pollution exposure and the occurrence of coronary vasomotor disorders, suggesting a possible role for pollutants in determining myocardial ischemia in patients with NOCAD,” the authors of the study noted.

Source: PTI

A team of US researchers has identified how a specific protein in coronavirus damages heart tissue and they used a drug, currently in emergency use for the treatment of Covid in India, to reverse the toxic effects of that protein on the heart. Dr Reddy’s Laboratories last year announced the commercial launch of 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2DG) for treatment of Covid-19. 2DG was developed by the Institute of Nuclear Medicine & Allied Sciences (INMAS), a laboratory of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), in collaboration with Dr Reddy’s Laboratories (DRL), Hyderabad.

Now, researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s (UMSOM) Center for Precision Disease have used 2DG to reverse the toxic effects of that protein on the heart.

The researchers said that fortunately, 2DG is inexpensive and is used regularly in laboratory research and is being used in clinical trials in India. The drug has not yet been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat the disease. “Our research shows that individual SARS-CoV-2 proteins can each do major damage to specific tissues in the body – similar to what has been found for other viruses like HIV and Zika,” said senior author Zhe Han, Professor of Medicine and Director of the Center for Precision Disease Modelling at UMSOM.

“By identifying these processes of injury in each tissue, we can test drugs to see whether any can reverse this damage; those drugs that show promise can then be further tested in clinical research studies,” Han added.

Their findings, based on research with fruit flies and mouse heart cells, were published in Communications Biology, a Nature journal. Last year, Dr Han and his research team identified the most toxic SARS-CoV-2 proteins in studies using fruit flies and human cells. They found a promising drug, selinexor, which reduced the toxicity of one of these proteins, but not the other one, known as Nsp6.

The team blocked sugar metabolism in fruit flies and mouse heart cells using the drug 2-DG. They found that the drug reduced the heart and mitochondria damage caused by the Nsp6 viral protein. “We predict this drug that changes the metabolism in the heart back to what it was before infection would be bad for the virus, by both cutting off its energy supply and eliminating the pieces it needs to replicate,” said Han. Manufactured by Dr Reddy’s, the drug has a purity of 99.5 per cent and is being sold commercially under the brand name 2DG. It can be administered only upon prescription and under the supervision of a qualified physician to hospitalised moderate to severe Covid-19 patients as an adjunct therapy to the existing standard of care.The emergency use approval for anti Covid-19 therapeutic application of the drug was granted on May 1, 2021.