Making a noise about the silent killer

Our new report profiles atherosclerosis and how Cyclarity’s novel therapy could prove to be a game-changer.

Cardiovascular disease is the world’s biggest killer claiming an estimated?17.9 million?lives each year.?A leading risk factor for CVD is high levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, a substance made up of fats and proteins which contributes to plaque build-up in the arteries. These plaque deposits narrow the arteries and make them less flexible, leading to a hardening of the arteries called atherosclerosis (from the Greek words for?paste?and?hardened).

However, the danger does not end there; oxidised low-density lipoprotein (oxLDL) cholesterol is taken up by macrophages resulting in a foamy cytoplasmic froth that causes cell death. These dead cells form a necrotic core that can rupture leading to a thrombosis, heart attack or stroke. In addition, oxLDL triggers an inflammatory response that can irritate the blood vessels, promote the growth of plaques, and loosen those plaques, leading to the same devastating events.

My take on this:?Atherosclerosis?is a killer, and the risk factor can be lowered by healthy lifestyle choices and by lipid-lowering agents such as statins. However, a new platform is tackling atherosclerosis in a novel way – by using custom-engineered cyclodextrins to capture, and remove from cells, oxidised cholesterol derivatives. This process removes plaque from arterial walls leaving toxic foam cells rehabilitated into healthy, functional macrophages and the dangerous oxidised cholesterol safely excreted.

The company behind this platform is Cyclarity, which is based in state-of-the-art labs at the prestigious Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, CA. Cyclarity’s lead candidate is a proprietary, custom-engineered, nontoxic cyclodextrin designed to achieve high affinity and high specificity for the oxidised cholesterol target, and we feel their technology is such a potential game-changer that we’ve partnered with them on a report into atherosclerosis and the promise of cyclodextrins.

Read the full article and check out the report HERE.

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this article, it would mean a lot to me if you could subscribe and share it on LinkedIn!