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Submolecular Markers that Leverages the Earliest Diagnostic Test of Acute Myocardial Infarction

Overview

NorthShore University HealthSystem Research Institute is seeking a company to license and/or co-develop a superior Troponin-based diagnostic test for acute myocardial infarction.  Myocardial infarction is the leading cause of death for both men and women worldwide, killing roughly seven million people annually. In the United States, myocardial infarction claims a life every 65 seconds.  Based on recent molecular pathology studies, NorthShore University HealthSystem Research Institute researchers have identified a submolecular target as a new generation of early diagnostic marker for myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury. This discovery could also represent a valuable approach for more effective treatment of acute myocardial infarction. 

Applications

Provides for earlier and more accurate detection, diagnosis, and guides the prevention and treatment of acute myocardial infarction. 

Advantages

  • Increased specificity, reliability, and accuracy. 
  • Our identified new targets are produced in minutes during ischemia reperfusion and, therefore, can be detected as the earliest sign of myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury. 

Description

Troponin T (TnT) and troponin I (TnI) are both abundant proteins in cardiac and skeletal muscles. Serum cardiac TnT and cardiac TnI have been used in the diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction for many years, but currently has two significant drawbacks: a lack of specificity to cardiac muscle and an inability to detect the earliest sign of myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury. 

NorthShore University HealthSystem researchers have discovered that acute myocardial ischemia-reperfusion first causes a posttranslational modification to cardiac TnT – truncating the hypervariable N-terminal region of TnT (via myofibril-associated µ-Calpain).  In animal models, this mechanism was complete within minutes and thus forms the basis of the earliest, highly heart-specific diagnostic marker for detecting myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury. They further found that a selective N-terminal truncation of cardiac TnI also occurs in acute myocardial infarction (although less extensive than cardiac TnT), providing another target for the diagnosis. Since the selective N-terminal truncations of cardiac TnT and TnI modifies cardiac function in coping with the stress conditions, future development of reagents interacting with cardiac TnT and cardiac TnI to mimic the effect of N-terminal truncations would lead to new drugs for the prevention and treatment of acute myocardial infarction. 

Patent Status: Patents Pending (US 60/833,084, 11/311,472)

About The Inventor

Jian-Ping Jin, PhDJian-Ping Jin, PhD, is Section Chief of Molecular Cardiology for NorthShore University HealthSystem Research Institute and an Associate Professor of Medicine for the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University.  His research is focused on the gene regulation and structure-function relationships of muscle proteins.  He has been published more than eighty times in various peer reviewed journals and press. Dr. Jin is currently a Standing Member of a grant review panel at National Institutes of Health. He is a Member of the Editorial Board of Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics and the Guest Editor of the 2006 Highlight Issue in Contractile Proteins. 

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