Beyond small molecule drugs for heart failure: prospects for gene therapy

For the past several years, the development of new therapeutic agents for chronic heart failure (CHF) has been challenged by a number of confounding factors: (1) the large number of currently approved therapeutics that have already been shown in combination to have a beneficial effect on survival in CHF patients; (2) the number of patients required to document survival effects for any new additional agent; (3) the need to show a clear-cut effect on survival in mega-trials; (4) the chronic nature of the disease which requires long-term therapy with any new therapeutic as well as a relatively favourable long-term side effect profile; (5) a relative lack of understanding of the pivotal events that drive the onset of clinically relevant endpoints in heart failure and that might lead to their reversal; and (6) the poor druggability of many potential therapeutic targets for CHF. In this regard, recent studies in small animal models have suggested that promoting calcium cycling in the failing heart can potentially reverse severe heart failure, even at advanced stages. This offers the opportunity to design studies to reverse end stage disease, representing a new therapeutic paradigm with important implications for clinical trial design. At the same time, recent advances in catheter-based gene delivery and third-generation AAV vectors have now been shown to allow cardiac restricted, long-term, high efficiency in vivo gene delivery and expression in large animal CHF model systems with few long-term side effects. Recent collaborative studies from independent groups at the Massachusetts General Hospital, the Baker Institute and University of California San Diego have now provided direct evidence that manipulation of calcium cycling, either via the over-expression of SERCA or the blockade of the SERCA inhibitor phospholamban can reverse many important clinical endpoints that are direct surrogates of survival in the late stage failing heart. These studies have formed the foundation for the initiation of AAV-based gene therapy clinical trials in 2006-7 in the USA.