U of A heart researchers get $25M boost

Funding will enable long-term investigation of heart failure

University of Alberta heart researchers are hailing a $25-million funding boost that will help pay for long-term studies of new treatments and medications, including a promising drug based on a compound found in red wine.

The money from the Heart and Stroke Foundation is part of a $300-million commitment to researchers across the country over the next decade. The foundation said it is investing in projects that will help achieve its goal of reducing by 25 per cent the number of deaths in Canada from heart disease and stroke by 2020.

At the U of A, much of the funding will go toward research in heart failure, the end stage of heart disease. Patients with heart failure are at higher risk of death and often have a poor quality of life plagued by fatigue, shortness of breath and intolerance to exercise.

“A few years ago, if you were diagnosed within heart failure, there was a 50-per-cent chance you would die within three years,” said Gary Lopaschuk, one of the U of A researchers benefiting from the funding. “That’s dropped off a little now, but we would like to get it way down so that if you have heart failure, you can live a relatively normal life.”

Lopaschuk’s work is focused on the heart’s energy system.

Ideally, the heart should use a balance of fats and sugars to create the huge amount of energy it needs to continue pumping, he said. But in cases of heart failure, a dramatic shift occurs in the proteins that regulate the metabolism.

“They get turned on and then the heart starts using fat at the expense of sugars,” Lopaschuk said. “If the heart uses too much fat as a fuel source, it becomes inefficient and this contributes to the severity of heart disease. The heart becomes almost energy-starved.”

He said the goal of his work is to find ways — through new treatments, nutrition plans and drugs — to optimize how the heart uses energy. The plan is to move ahead with clinical trials in the next year or two, he said. One treatment that could soon be ready for testing is based on resveratrol, a compound found in red wine that can aid energy metabolism.

“There is already some early evidence we have that is quite exciting that we can dramatically improve heart function in patients with heart failure and improve exercise tolerance and decrease fatigueability,” he said. “So the next thing is to do a larger, randomized clinical trial to be comfortable that it actually works. We can take this to the next level of actually benefiting patients.”

Colleague Justin Ezekowitz said the 10-year funding commitment means multi-year trials can go ahead without fear of money running out, and it will help attract top scholars and enable collaborations.

About 69,000 Canadians die each year from heart disease or stroke.