Could molecule in deadly spider venom treat heart attack and stroke?

The Senior

Researchers explain about the Hi1a molecule found in K'gari funnel -web spider venom and how it could potentially be used as a treatment for heart attack and stroke.

Transcript

00:00 H.I.1.A is a molecule that was discovered from the venom of the funnel web spider on

00:10 Kigari Island and we have identified it as a potent protector of the heart in the context

00:16 of injuries like heart attacks.

00:21 We've identified that this drug is effective at treating heart attacks at all time points

00:26 in the course of an injury and we've also found that the molecule is exceedingly safe

00:31 in the fact that it doesn't actually interact or affect regions of the heart that are not

00:36 injured.

00:40 When someone has a heart attack, they're taken in an ambulance to the hospital to try to

00:45 correct the injury as quickly as possible.

00:47 And so in these preclinical studies, we evaluated when this drug is effective in preventing

00:53 that injury from occurring and show that in all contexts and time points, this drug seems

00:58 to block the injuries associated with a heart attack all the way from the ambulance time

01:02 points through to the hospital.

01:08 We were very excited when we found that this molecule only binds to the injured regions

01:13 of the heart and the ability to actually visualize that molecule on the surface of the injury

01:20 is one of the most surprising findings that we had from these studies.

01:29 Super exciting.

01:30 The heart attack is one of the biggest killers in the world and yet we have absolutely no

01:35 drugs that will protect the heart during a heart attack.

01:38 So there's an incredible patient need, not just here in Australia, but worldwide and

01:42 this could be the very first drug to protect the heart during a heart attack and that will

01:47 have massive clinical implications.

01:53 This was an important preclinical study that really enabled us to understand how effective

01:57 the molecule is, how we would dose it and it positions us to, in the future, go into

02:03 human clinical trials to first of all test its safety and then look at its efficacy for

02:09 patients that are suffering from a heart attack.

02:15 So we had a particular therapeutic target we were interested in called an iron channel

02:20 and the very best source of molecules that modulate the activity of iron channels are

02:26 venoms, venomous animals.

02:27 And so we searched our collection of 500 different venoms and the winning molecule, amazingly,

02:33 was found in the venom of an Australian funnel-web spider.

02:40 So the molecule we found is found in the venom in very minute quantities so there was no

02:45 way we could possibly get enough material for what we wanted to do by milking spiders

02:50 so we had to make this not synthetically but by engineering bacteria to express the peptide.

02:59 So what happens during a heart attack is the heart doesn't get enough oxygen, that means

03:03 it needs to change the way that it burns fuel and it reverts to this ancient metabolic pathway,

03:09 the end result of which is a lot of lactate and that causes the pH to go down and it activates

03:14 this iron channel that we're interested in called ASIC1A and what that does when it's

03:20 activated is lead to death of the heart muscle cells.

03:24 And so what this molecule does is simply stop that channel responding to the acidosis that

03:31 you see during a heart attack and that in turn prevents all that downstream cell death

03:35 that you would otherwise get in the heart.

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