BIOMAGSCAR

By 2010 1.5 million stents per year will be deployed in Europe. Although outcome for patients has improved, stents still fail because of the occurrence of restenosis and thrombosis at the site of implantation. While drug eluting stents have helped to reduce the problem of restenosis, neointimal proliferation causing restenosis can still occur. Additional concerns exist regarding drug eluting stents as there appears to be a small but real increase in late and very late stent thrombosis, particularly after discontinuation of antiplatelet therapy.
The novel concept we propose is use of a biodegradable magnetised stent (BMS) to deliver a novel biological therapy offering regenerative medicine solutions to the coronary artery vessel wall. Specifically we will develop the stent technology as a platform to attract autologous progenitor cells tagged in vitro with iron nanoparticles. Once deployed, the cells will be attracted to the already implanted BMS and proliferate to form a new endothelium. We will also use over-expression of the NRP1 gene in the artery wall where it will dimerise with NRP1 receptors on the deployed cells. The NRP1 gene will be transfected by adenovirus delivered from the wall of the BMS. Over time the BMS will undergo a predictable degradation to leave a wholly biological artery through regeneration of native tissues.
Currently, about 12,000 European Citizens a year suffer from late in-stent thrombosis and 120,000 from restenosis. With the knowledge and technologies developed through the BIOMAGSCAR project we aim to halve this number of patients and save 66,000 people from unnecessary suffering, saving the European healthcare system 275 million p.a. in direct costs, only 10% of the total associated costs.
Our consortium includes a vascular disease therapy company, a stent research and manufacturing company, four universities and a specialist in innovative technology investment, all of whom believe our technology will dramatically change this field.