Ziad Ali, MD, PhD, was a cardiovascular fellow at Stanford with a rather unique skill when a 6-year study published today online in The Journal of Clinical Investigation first began.
The multi-talented physician-scientist - who is now associate director of translational medicine at Columbia University Medical Center - had figured out a way to put tiny little stents into mice with clogged arteries as a PhD student.
The skill would become key as he and colleagues set out to find a better pharmaceutical for the drug-eluting stents that are used in combination with angioplasty to treat coronary artery disease. In order to prevent stent disease, the often serious medical problem caused by stents themselves, chemotherapy drugs were added to bare metal stents. But these drug-eluting stents have their own problems: The drugs work like "hitting a pin with a sledgehemmer," as Ali describes it, often damaging the lining of the arteries which can lead to heart attacks. As a result, patients are required to take blood thinners for up to a year after the procedure to prevent clots.
"A lot of our patient population is on the elderly side with bad hips or diabetes," Ali told me. "Once you get a drug-coated stent, you can't have surgery for a year. And if you stop the blood thinners for any reason, you're at risk of a stent clotting off. And that actually causes a heart attack. Stent thrombosis has a high mortality rate."
By using a "big data" computational approach, learning about the genetic pathways involved in coronary artery disease, then testing the new theories on mice models in the lab, researchers were able to pinpoint a potential new treatment for patients: Crizotinib, a pharmaceutical approved by the FDA for treatment in certain cases of lung cancer.
"This could have major clinical impact," Euan Ashley, MD, PhD, senior author of the study, who discusses the work alongside Ali in the video above, said.
Previously: Euan Ashley discusses harnessing big data to drive innovation for a healthier world, New computing center at Stanford supports big data, Trial results promising for new anti-clotting drug and A call to use the "tsunami of biomedical data" to preserve life and enhance health
Photo in featured entry box by Mark Tuschman
