Novel stent may stimulate natural heart bypasses

BARCELONA, Sep 3 (Reuters) Dutch doctors said today they had developed a novel drug-coated stent to stimulate the growth of natural heart bypass arteries, potentially offering a new way to ensure blood supply to sick patients' hearts.

The device has yet to be tested on humans but tests in animals found it almost doubled the blood flow in small collateral arteries compared to treatment with a conventional stent.

Stents are tiny, wire-mesh tubes that are use to prop open the arteries.

Newer drug-coated stents, designed to prevent arterial scarring, have grown hugely in popularity in the last three years and now generate annual sales of more than 5 billion dollars.

Rather than simply focusing on the main coronary arteries, the experimental Dutch stent is designed to help smaller ones develop, enabling them to take over the function of narrowed or blocked ones.

It works by releasing the drug TGF-beta1, which makes arteries grow faster and increases their diameter, Dr Sebastian Grundmann of Amsterdam's Academic Medical Centre told the World Congress of Cardiology.

Further pre-clinical testing is needed before the first patients can be treated with the new device.

But Grundmann believes the system could eventually become an important treatment option for patients with complex heart disease for whom bypass surgery is difficult or impossible.

REUTERS AKJ HS1248