In addition to World Cancer Day last week, Valentine's Day Sunday (and the heart being the ubiquitous symbol of love), it is also Heart Health Month here in the US.  The timing is propitious since there are some interesting new publications addressing peptides and cardiovascular research.  Catalog products in this article, linked to the vivitide website, are also discounted until Friday, 2/19!

Investigators from the Akershus University Hospital in Lørenskog, Norway, examined the relationship of the B-Type Natriuretic Peptide (BNP) relative to problems with elevated BNP, yet exhibited in patients known to be free of coronary heart disease.  As stated in the abstract, “concentrations of B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) reflect myocardial distension and stress, and are associated with poor prognosis in patients with cardiovascular disease.”1 This led to their conclusion that, “natriuretic peptides are beneficial and elicit cardioprotective effects, and may have important implications for the interpretation of BNP measurements in the general population.”1

Cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs), are featured in the next publication, authored by a trio from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, from Pittsburgh, PA and Dual Systems Biotech AG Schlieren, in Switzerland.  They coined the term “Cardiac Targeting Peptide” (CTP) to describe peptides that by “…phage display, identifying a 12-amino acid, non-naturally occurring peptide that targets the heart with peak uptake at 15 min after a peripheral intravenous injection.” 2  Their positive results led them to conclude that these tissue specific peptides, “can be applied to deliver radioisotopes, miRNA, siRNA, peptides, and proteins of therapeutic potential for acute cardiac conditions like myocardial infarction, where the window of opportunity for salvaging at-risk myocardium is limited to 6 hrs.” 2

Finally, the review article “Glucagon-Like Peptide (GLP-1) Receptor Agonists in Cardiac Disorders” by a group from the Second Affiliated Hospital of the University of South China, Hengyang, in the Hunan Province of China, examined GLP-1, a peptide generally associated with anti-diabetic effects.  They found that the results mixed regarding “the anti-hyperglycemic efficacy” of “GLP-1RAs on myocardial function in humans.”3

References

  1. N. Lyngbakken, et al., Clinical Chemistry, 67-1, 204, (2021). https://doi.org/10.1093/clinchem/hvaa257
  2. S. Feldman, M.P. Pavlou, and M. Zahid, Cardiac Targeting Peptide: From Identification to Validation to Mechanism of Transduction. In: K. Narayanan (eds) Bio-Carrier Vectors. Methods in Molecular Biology, 2211, Humana, New York, NY. (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-0943-9_8
  3. SD Kumar, et al., IJSIT, 10(1), 030 (2021). (PDF)
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