ColdFusion - Breakthrough: Nanoparticle Eats Plaque Responsible for Heart Attacks

Starting point is 00:00:01 This video was brought to you by Audible. Hi, welcome to the third Cold Fusion episode for this week. Last time, we took a look at Tesla's announcements for a $25,000 car and improved battery technology and manufacturing. But today, we're going to look at something completely different. In a Stanford School of Medicine study, a drug-coated carbon nanotube reduced plaque build-up in mice arteries without causing harmful side effects.

Starting point is 00:00:28 So you might be thinking, So what? Who cares? Well, this is probably why you should. Cardiovascular disease is the world's leading cause of death, with almost 18 million people each year dying from it. It accounts for a third of all deaths, and one third of these deaths occur prematurely in people under 70. In fact, the frequency of this disease is 100% in people over 65. It's just a matter of severity. The disease can start from childhood and can be seen. silently building for decades. So this story is important to everyone. In this episode, we're going to take a look at some new research out of Stanford that uses carbon nanotubes to solve this problem.

Starting point is 00:01:11 It's super interesting stuff, so let's take a look. You are watching Tull Fusion TV. Arthorosclerosis, which leads to cardiovascular disease and other diseases, is caused by the build up of fats, calcium, cholesterol, which is a waxy substance within the blood. and other materials, building up in and on your artery walls. This mass is called plaque. In some cases, the plaque can burst, triggering a blood clot. Strokes, heart attacks, organ failures,

Starting point is 00:01:49 and a whole host of problems can occur from the buildup of plaque in our arteries. The exact cause of the disease is unknown. The risk factors include high cholesterol levels, diabetes, obesity and an unhealthy diet. So after understanding these facts, it's a reminder to look after yourself. I know it was to me. The treatment of the established disease may include medications to lower cholesterol or blood thinners such as aspirin, but for late-stage patients this has only a limited efficacy. A lot of medical treatments often focus on alleviating the symptoms, but don't do much to get

Starting point is 00:02:25 up the underlying problem. Although treatments are getting better, they target the risk factors, but don't treat the the accumulation of disease cells and inflammation within artery walls. Newer treatments have come about that suppressed the plaque buildup by using antibodies. These antibody treatments cause problems by clearing healthy tissue as well, which leads to complications. In other words, these new methods aren't precise enough for the job. It's a tricky issue and it's time for some new thinking for this problem. What if there was something that had the potential to stop the disease and...

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Starting point is 00:03:57 Even reverse the plaque buildup. The solution may lie in an unexpected place. Carbon nanotubes. When people mention carbon nanotubes, images of some crazy material from a Marvel comic or something spring to mind. But the thing is, it basically is that. It's a remarkable material. They're essentially rolled up sheets of graphene,

Starting point is 00:04:21 a single layer of carbon atoms thick, just rolled up into a tube. So it has all the amazing properties of graphene, just in tube form. Carbon nanotubes were discovered all the way back in 1993 by two independent research teams. Recently, carbon nanotubes have been experiencing a surprisingly strong interest in the medical field for the purposes of drug delivery. Unlike conventional drugs, they can target very specific cells and regions without having the side effect of harming healthy cells. So here's how it works.

Starting point is 00:04:55 Firstly, the issue with plaque is that the problematic cells within the artery give off a don't destroy me see. signal. This signal stops the immune systems waste removal cells from destroying them. We'll call this signal a cloaking signal because it's easier to think of the problematic cells as hiding. Interestingly, that same signal is found on the surface of many types of cancers, allowing them to escape detection and multiply. So here comes the solution. Researchers first developed a nanotube about two to three nanometers in diameter. For reference, a nanometer is about the size of a DMM. DNA or a thousand times smaller than a bacteria or 100,000 times thinner than the width of a sheet of paper.

Starting point is 00:05:42 These tiny nanotubes were then modified in a solution to make them biocompatible, and finally they were bonded with special dye so that they could be tracked and their location measured. The nanotubes were then loaded with a molecule that turns off that pesky cloaking signal. This is all shown here in figure 1B. The red CY 5.5.5. is the dye that makes the nanotubes visible. The SHP1i is the molecule that turns off the cloaking signal. It's pretty cool, right? Unlike the existing antibody treatments,

Starting point is 00:06:17 these nanotubes were taken up by white blood cells. The white blood cells naturally end up in inflammatory sites, such as artery plaque. Once they were inside the plaque, the white blood cells now recognized the problematic cells and destroyed them. We'll discuss the promising results of the state. in a bit.

Starting point is 00:06:36 Dr. Smith, one of the authors of the paper, explains, quote, we found that we could stimulate the macrophages, and just a note, that means destroyer cells or white blood cells in our case, two, selectively eat dead cells and dying cells. These inflammatory cells are the precursor cells to atherosclerosis. That just means the plaque buildup in the arteries, that are part of the cause of heart attacks. Hear that?

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Starting point is 00:07:31 so the white blood cells can recognize that it should spring into action and get rid of the problematic cells which are the dead cells and cell debris, the kind of cells that make up the core of plaque deposits. As the study states, once the cloaking mechanism is shut off, the white blood cells, quote, cause the plaques to eat themselves from the inside out,

Starting point is 00:07:53 thus reducing their size and stabilizing their growth, end quote. It's almost like giving the body a nudge to fight against plaque buildup in arteries, which it usually would ignore. So here are the results. The research is far. found that the nanotherapy reduced plaque by 40% in both male and female mice with less advanced plaque buildup, and it reduced plaque by 20% in mice with advanced plaque buildup.

Starting point is 00:08:21 You can see that here in this image. What you're looking at here is a cross-section of an artery. On the left is the control group, with nanotubes containing just the dye, and on the right is nanotubes that include the molecule that inhibits the cloaking signal. The researchers discuss more. Quote, because the white blood cells that took the nanotubes went to artery plaque rather than healthy tissue, the nanotherapy avoided side effects such as organ damage. We were able to constrain the uptake into just the cells we want. There's a general rule of treatment. The more targeted you get, the fewer side effects you have. It's an exciting development, not only for cardiovascular disease, but also for cancer. The study also found, quote, minimal to no accumulation

Starting point is 00:09:06 in the healthy aorta, bone marrow, heart, lung, gut, fat, muscle, and kidneys, end quote. I think that's a good sign. The authors call these results a key translational barrier for this class of drugs. The researchers add, quote, but best of all, we didn't see any significant toxicities. Interestingly, carbon nanotubes have also proved safe and don't cause the immune system to go crazy in primates. So eventually the idea is that a solution containing the nanoparticles will be IV injected into a patient and then will flow through their bloodstream. Before we continue, I just want to thank this episode's sponsor.

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Starting point is 00:11:38 want to listen to new thinking or any other audiobooks, go to audible.com slash cold fusion or text cold fusion to 500, 500 for a 30-day free trial. Right, so where were we? Yeah. Scientists loaded carbon nanotubes with an anti-cloaking molecule that makes artery plaque eat itself. So how did they attach the drug that switches off the cloaking mechanism to the carbon nanotube? Well, it was done via a process called pie stacking, as depicted here. Interestingly, there is some control over how aggressively you want the drug to be delivered. The larger the diameter, the stronger the attachment of the molecule to the carbon nanotube. This method was first used in 2007.

Starting point is 00:12:23 So I had a question when I was first looking into the therapy. I asked myself, well, this is all well and good, but what has how much? happens to the nanotubes once they've done their job, do they just float around forever? Well, as it turns out, other studies have revealed that carbon nanotubes are eliminated by immune cells in a matter of weeks. These experiments, which were cited by the Stanford study, were carried out in 2010 and 2016 respectively. So I think this is also very exciting and could save a lot of people from an early death, but these are very early days and we should be cautiously optimistic. But seeing that this disease is the number one killer on the planet,

Starting point is 00:13:01 I'm still very encouraged by such preliminary research. I'm interested to know your thoughts, especially those of you who have been diagnosed with a vascular condition. Let me know in the comments. If you want to see a similar video on nanotherapy that kills cancer, I'll leave a link to that video below. So that's just about it for me. If you do want to see anything on science, technology, business or history,

Starting point is 00:13:25 definitely subscribe to Coldfusion. You'll get to see some interesting topics like this one, and many others. Anyway, my name is DeGogo, and you'll be watching Cold Fusion, and I'll see you again next week for the next episode. Next time, we'll be taking a look at the history of Adobe Software. Did you know that in 1993, one of the co-founders was kidnapped at Gunpoint? It's an interesting story, so stay tuned for that one. Cheers, guys. Have a good one.

ColdFusion - Breakthrough: Nanoparticle Eats Plaque Responsible for Heart Attacks

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