HRI awarded prestigious Ramaciotti grant

Dr Sanjay Patel, Group Leader at the Heart Research Institute, has been awarded a highly prestigious 2016 Ramaciotti Grant to pursue his work developing a cost-effective therapy to prevent heart attack and stroke.

The five Ramaciotti Health Investment Grants of $150,000 are awarded to autonomous early career scientists to support health or medical research with a potential path to clinical application within five years.

The grant will allow Dr Patel to pursue his work developing a novel cost-effective therapy to stop the progression of atherosclerosis before it leads to heart attack and stroke.

This project targets inflammation, by testing the cardio-protective properties of colchicine, a widely available and cost-effective anti-inflammatory drug that has long been used to treat arthritis caused by gout.

Dr Patel, who is also an interventional cardiologist at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital Hospital, discovered that colchicine, can significantly improve heart health by lowering the levels of dangerous inflammatory proteins.

Inflammatory cells and proteins play a critical role in atherosclerosis, fat build-up in the vessel wall, the leading cause of death and disability in Australia. Despite current best treatments, many people remain at high risk of cardiovascular complications such as stroke, or heart attack – which claims the life of someone in Australia every 24 minutes.

“If we’re able to prove its success in larger studies, we’ll have a brand new therapy that will considerably brighten the outlook for people who suffer heart attacks,” said Dr Patel.

In initial studies, Dr Patel studied 40 people with acute coronary syndrome, a life-threatening condition in which the coronary blood vessel is blocked, causing heart attack or severe chest pain.

“In these studies we are able to treat patients straight away, and have already in preliminary research,” he said.