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When blood supply is inadequate and doesn’t match the demand from your heart, there can be heart trouble – chest pain called angina.
Blood supply is often not up to par because of coronary artery disease, the build-up of plaque inside blood vessels that can restrict blood flow to areas of the heart. For those with chronic angina (also called refractory angina) who’ve exhausted their treatment options to increase that blood flow – everything from medication to stents – there may be hope in the form of a new gene therapy.
Lehigh Valley Heart and Vascular Institute is part of a trial by XyloCor Therapeutics to determine how well that gene therapy works. It’s one of just 16 sites chosen for the study.
The gene therapy looks to prompt heart muscles to produce more of a naturally occurring protein called human vascular endothelial growth factor, or VEGF. The increased VEGF is designed to lead to the formation of new blood vessels in the heart that would bypass diseased blood vessels and increase blood flow to the heart.