Related ASU Web Sites
The Harrington Department of Bioengineering
The Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University
Publication Date: Fall 2004
Healthy hearts can be hard to find in the United States. By age 65, one in three Americans will develop coronary artery disease. It’s the country’s leading cause of death.
Many people opt for surgery to unclog their plaque-filled blood vessels. But almost half of them will be forced to schedule a return engagement when the once-repaired vessel clogs again. The phenomenon is called restenosis.
Alyssa Panitch is working to limit multiple visits to the surgeon’s table. Panitch is an assistant professor in the Harrington School of Bioengineering at ASU’s Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering. Her work is supported by a 5-year grant from the National Institutes of Health.
“Restenosis typically happens when someone’s artery is partially blocked because of plaque,” Panitch explains. “Typically, surgeons go in with a balloon catheter to expand the artery. The catheter can damage the endothelium and smooth muscle cells that line the artery.”
Once a blood vessel is damaged, doctors now know that it can become blocked again in as little as six months to a year after the original surgery.
Panitch’s mentor on the project is Colleen Brophy, director of the Center for Protein and Peptide Therapeutics at the Biodesign Institute at ASU. Brophy originally identified a small protein called HSP20. When introduced inside smooth muscle cells, a small fragment of HSP20 causes those cells to relax. That fragment is called a peptide.
Panitch says that the relaxation effect might be used as an important new tool in coronary bypass surgery. During a bypass procedure, the surgeon removes a long piece of vein from another portion of the patient’s body, usually the leg. The surgeon uses the vein to “bypass” the blocked part of the coronary artery. The grafted vein takes over the job of moving fresh blood and oxygen to healthy heart muscle cells.
“The veins that surgeons use can go into spasm. That can cause the graft to fail in the long term,” Panitch says.
The ASU researchers are focusing on how best to optimize the bioactivity of the peptide. They also want to determine how best to deliver the HSP20 protein inside smooth muscle cells to prevent the vein from going into its harmful spasm. —Joe CaspermeyerFor more information, contact Alyssa Panitch, Ph.D., Harrington Department of Bioengineering, 480.965.1430. Send e-mail to Alyssa.Panitch@asu.eduEngineering and Technology: Bioengineering