Enkephalin metabolism in cardiac ischemia, heart failure and cardiac surgery

Funding Activity

Website
http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/225127

Funding Status
Closed

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Funded Activity Summary

It has recently been discovered in animal studies that heart muscle can make its own opioid proteins. Previously, it was thought that only nerves made and released opioids. We have recently found that a class of opioids called enkephalins are made and then depleted from the heart during the stress of oxygen and nutrient deprivation. Enkephalins have been found to have potent metabolic effects on the heart. Previous work has shown that opioids can protect the heart against injury incurred during disease that restricts energy and oxygen supply to the blood vessels and heart. We wish to demonstrate this for the first time in human heart, and we will explore whether the production of enkephalins is altered by the stresses of cardiac surgery and heart failure. Understanding how the human heart attempts to protect itself in disease and how enkephalins work under these conditions, may prove valuable in the development of new drug therapy with synthetic drugs which mimic the action of enkephalins for heart protection during cardiac surgery, heart transplantation and ischemic heart disease. We will test whether specific enkephalins may be used to improve donor heart viability for transplantation by improving the duration and quality of preservation during storage. Understanding what happens to enkephalin production and metabolism in the failing hearts of patients may allow us to find new therapeutic targets in heart failure.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-01-2003

End Date: 01-01-2005

Funding Scheme: NHMRC Project Grants

Funding Amount: $327,037.00

Funder: National Health and Medical Research Council

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

Surgery

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

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Other Keywords

cardiac failure | cardiac surgery | cardiac transplantation | cardioplegia and cardiac transplantation | enkephalins (opioids) | ischaemia reperfusion | metabolism | myocardial ischemia

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