For some patients, managing cholesterol creates a challenge. Statins are a safe and standard treatment but many people have very high levels of cholesterol that require more than statin drugs alone. Others cannot easily tolerate statins. Nonetheless, treating cholesterol saves lives and avoids heart attacks and strokes.
Thankfully, the future is here with new breakthroughs that can change the way we maintain healthy cholesterol levels due to continued research and clinical trial participants. We outline some of these exciting technologies below.
Antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) are short, synthetic single stranded fragments of RNA that can reduce, restore or modify protein expression. ASOs have been designed specifically to target high levels of LDL (bad cholesterol) in the bloodstream in a different way than current medications. Firstly, ASOs targets the source of the disease resulting in a higher chance of success compared to therapies targeting downstream pathways. Secondly, ASOs are not metabolized by cytochrome P450 as most other drugs are. This significantly reduces the chance of one drug interacting with another drug in the body which could potentially cause more harm than good.
Small interfering RNA (SiRNAs) are another type of RNA therapy that is being used in clinical trials to reduce the risks of cardiovascular disease. Unlike ASOs which are single-stranded oligodeoxynucleotides, siRNAs are double-stranded RNA molecules. SiRNAs are used in the silencing of disease-causing genes, in this case the genes involved in creating cardiovascular diseases, and it has made great progress.
Adnectins are a class of drugs used to target proteins. Adnectins can be rapidly developed to bind proteins or other necessary targets. Currently, adnectins are being used in clinical trials to bind with a human protein called PCSK9. This binding blocks the interactions between PCSK9 and LDL (bad cholesterol) receptors. As a result, the levels of LDL cholesterol in the body are lowered.
These technologies hold the potential to not only better manage cholesterol levels and thereby reducing heart attack and stroke risk, but many other conditions as well.
Source:
US National Library of Medicine
National Institutes of Health
