New drug developed in Perth a gamechanger for curing the life-threatening peripheral artery disease

West Australians could be the first to be treated for a common but life-threatening disease that often leads to heart attacks, limb amputations and even death. Current medications do not provide a cure for peripheral artery disease — which is caused by a build-up of cholesterol-containing plaques on artery walls, which leads to a reduction in blood flow to the legs and other vital organs. But Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital surgeon and professor Shirley Jansen and associate professor Juliana Hamzah have found success in a first-of-its-kind drug that could save the lives of people suffering from advanced stages of the condition. More than 230 million people worldwide suffer from the disease with two-thirds of people with end stages of the condition requiring an amputation and approximately a fifth will have a cardiac event such as a heart attack. Dr Jansen said she and associate professor Hamzah had been developing and researching a drug that can remove the build-up of cholesterol from arteries. “Once that cholesterol is in the wall this drug will dissolve it away so that’s a potential cure,” she said. “We are hoping that it saves limbs because it is possibly providing a cure to a disease process that has never had that applied to it because all the drugs we give now are just to reduce risk, and they do that very well, but they don’t cure the problem. “It is absolutely a game changer.” Associate professor Hamzah said the next step was to manufacture the drug for clinical trials for patients in WA. “The next step is for us to make the drugs fit for human consumption and that means we have to produce them in a scale and quality that we can use in clinical trials,” she said. “We now need to fundraise because it costs about a billion dollars to bring a drug to the market.” “We are in desperate need of some philanthropic funding, ideally to take us through and make sure we can get this to patients before it’s too late,” Dr Jansen said. SCGH patient Michael Egan had to have both fronts of his feet amputated as a result of the disease, which has left him in a wheelchair. “I had toes removed originally and then a bilateral amputation so balance is a problem,” he said. “If I lean forward I’m more likely to fall and I’m unsteady on my feet so I’m in a wheelchair.” He said being given the opportunity to take this ground-breaking drug would be life-altering. “Clinical trials will help save lives from heart attacks, strokes and lot of other things so being given the opportunity to reduce that risk is tremendous,” he said. The research so far has been made possible thanks to a collaboration with SCGH and the Harry Perkins Institute.