Melbourne researchers develop safer and more effective "aspirin"

Monash University researchers and staff of the Melbourne-based biotechnology company Cerylid Biosciences Ltd, have discovered and developed a new class of anti-clotting drugs that appears to be more effective than aspirin at preventing disease-causing blood clots and has fewer side effects.

Heart attack and stroke are the leading cause of death and disability in the western world and result in the death of about 50,000 Australians each year.

They are typically caused by blood clots that block blood flow to the heart or brain. Patients (except those stroke patients whose illness is caused by bleeding into the brain) are usually treated with aspirin, but this can increase the risk of bleeding and lead to life-threatening haemorrhages.

Associate Professor Shaun Jackson (pictured), from the Australian Centre for Blood Diseases at Monash, said this new class of drugs, called PI 3-kinase inhibitors, may prove to be vitally important in treating heart attack and stroke patients by stopping formation of the problem-causing blood clots without causing excessive bleeding.

“Aspirin is the most widely used anti-clotting drug , however it is only effective at preventing fatal heart attack and stroke for about one in four patients,” Dr Jackson said. “There is a major need for safer and more effective anti-clotting drugs. The ’holy grail’ in the field is a drug that prevents disease-causing clots whilst not increasing the risk of bleeding.”

Animal studies have shown that the drugs, developed by Dr Jackson and colleagues at the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Melbourne, Cerylid Biosciences and the University College of London, do not increase the risk of bleeding.

Phase I trials in human volunteers have also yielded promising results.

The drugs were developed after Dr Jackson and colleagues identified the mechanism that promotes the formation of pathological blood clots (clots that lead to heart attack or stroke) and how it differed from the mechanisms involved in normal blood clotting.

Their research is published today in the international journal Nature Medicine.

Dr Jackie Fairley, CEO of Cerylid Biosciences, said it was too early to say if the drugs would replace aspirin in treating heart attack and stroke but that at this stage in their development, they had enormous potential.

Commercial rights to these anti-thrombotic compounds are held by Cerylid Biosciences. The company, which holds a number of patents over the compounds and associated technology, will take its second-generation PI3-kinase inhibitor, CBL1309, into clinical trials later this year.

For more information contact: Monash University — Ms Penny Fannin on +61 3 9905 5828 or 0417 125 700. Cerylid Biosciences — Ms Rebecca Christie, Buchan Consulting, 0417 382 391