A New Target for the Treatment of Pulmonary Hypertension
Background
- In Europe and the US, over 500,000 people have pulmonary hypertension and the NHLBI estimates that thousands of new cases are diagnosed each year in the US.
- Currently, there are a few drug therapies available to treat pulmonary hypertension but all are expensive.
- Not all drugs work in each patient and physicians must try each drug separately to determine the successful pharmacological approach.
- There is a need for a new therapy that is effective in most, if not all, patients and targets the pathophysiologic mechanism of the disease.
- The current market for pulmonary hypertension is estimated at $1.5 billion per year.
Description of Current Technology
Dr. Jeffrey Whitsett of the Cincinnati Children's Research Foundation has demonstrated that midkine, a retinoic acid-response, 13 kDa heparin-binding growth factor expressed in pulmonary epithelium, may be a significant target for treating pulmonary hypertension. The pulmonary vasculature is highly responsive to ambient oxygen. Hypoxia has been shown to up-regulate midkine gene expression resulting in increased muscularization of small pulmonary arteries. This results in arteriolar narrowing, right ventricular hypertrophy, cor pulmonare and pulmonary hypertension. Increased midkine expression, pulmonary vascular remodeling and cor pulmonale have been observed in hypoxia-sensitive CAST/ei mice during hypoxia. These data demonstrate that midkine expression in the respiratory epithelium elicits remodeling of the pulmonary vasculature and thickening of the muscular media in pulmonary arteries leading to pulmonary hypertension. Thus, midkine gene and expressed proteins are likely targets for the development of new therapies to treat this disorder. A patent application has been filed.
Objective
The Cincinnati Children's Research Foundation is seeking a corporate partner to support further proof of concept studies and to license the technology for the development and marketing of a new therapy for the treatment of pulmonary hypertension.
Contact
To discuss this opportunity further and/or to receive confidential and proprietary information relating to this technology, please contact:
Joseph D. Fondacaro, PhD
Director, Office of Intellectual Property & Venture Development
Cincinnati Children's Research Foundation
Mail Location 7032
3333 Burnet Avenue
Cincinnati, Ohio 45229-3039
Phone: 513-636-7695
Fax: 513-636-8453
Email: jdfonda@cchmc.org
Related Study Information
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