Engineers funded to help fight chief cause of heart attacks with tailored nanoparticles, new image techniques
July 18, 2006

The American Heart Association has funded two biomedical engineering professors’ research to combat plaque, the chief cause of heart attacks and strokes. 

Tailored nanoparticles serving as ID tags for early-stage plaque, and an imaging tool that incorporates ultrasound to more clearly picture the plaque received the “early-stage” funding. 

Both projects address atherosclerosis, a common systemic disease characterized by the build-up of plaque within arteries. Atherosclerosis causes heart attacks, strokes and chronic stable angina (chest pain caused by insufficient oxygen reaching the heart).

Drs. Lisa Brannon-Peppas and Stanislav Emelianov have each received a two-year $130,000 grant from the American Heart Association.

Brannon-Peppas will develop nanoparticles that can latch onto different types of atherosclerotic plaques so they can be recognized earlier to improve the treatment of heart disease and prevention of heart attacks. Plaques can form in the blood vessels that supply nutrients to heart muscle. These cholesterol-laden plaques produce heart attacks when they completely obstruct the blood vessel or incite the formation of a blood clot that blocks the vessel.

The grant will allow the biomedical engineering professor to create nanoparticles of biodegradable polymers containing the imaging agent gadolinium. The nanoparticles will be treated with molecules that can interact with plaques in their early stages of development, where few current methods of detection exist. Additionally, vulnerable, advanced plaques will be targeted that are most likely to produce an imminent heart attack.

Brannon-Peppas’ lab will identify which surface molecules on plaques serve as the best targets during different stages of formation and determine the best concentrations of nanoparticle-related components to use for imaging.  The interaction will be visualized using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) equipment at The University of Texas at Austin’s Imaging Research Center in North Austin and at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. The latter work will involve Dr. John Hazle, professor and chairman of the cancer center’s Imaging Physics Department.

Assistant Professor Emelianov’s research addresses an urgent clinical need for an imaging technique capable of morphological and functional imaging of coronary arteries. The tool is needed to identify atherosclerotic plaques susceptible to rupture so patients can take preventive measures. Plaque rupture is the most common type of plaque complication and accounts for approximately 70 percent of fatal heart attacks.

Emelianov seeks to create a new clinical imaging technique which, unlike current standard techniques, can characterize plaque composition during coronary artery interventions and thus identify vulnerable plaque. In collaboration with a leading interventional cardiologist, Dr. Richard Smalling at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Emelianov will combine intravascular ultrasound, and elasticity and photoacoustic imaging into the catheter imaging system routinely used in interventional cardiology.

The project’s ultimate goal is to develop sophisticated imaging technology capable of directly assessing the type and amount of plaque in arteries, and improving medical procedures.

For high resolution photos of the researchers, use the link below:
www.engr.utexas.edu/news/action_shots/pages/AHA_Grants6_06.cfm