February 3, 2009 - Cerenis Therapeutics SA, a privately held pharmaceutical company developing HDL-related compounds for the treatment of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, has in-licensed intellectual property supporting an investigational new treatment of aortic valve stenosis (AVS) based on HDL therapy.
The intellectual property is based on breakthrough research from a team led by Jean-Claude Tardif, M.D. at the Montreal Heart Institute Research Centre, Canada.
AVS is characterized by a narrowing of the aortic valve, which can obstruct the flow of oxygenated blood from the heart to the rest of the body. As the heart works harder to compensate for the obstruction, the heart muscle thickens and can cause a potentially dangerous imbalance in blood pressure between the heart and body.
In Dr. Tardif's placebo-controlled study in rabbit AVS models, the aortic valve opening in the treatment group returned to a near-normal state and aortic valve thickness was significantly decreased after 14 days of treatment. In addition, the treatment group showed significantly less extensive valve lesions than the control group as well as reduced aortic valve calcification. Results of the study were published in April 2008 in the British Journal of Pharmacology.
For more information: www.cerenis.com.