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Circulation on the Run


May 29, 2018

Dr Carolyn Lam:                Welcome to Circulation on the Run, your weekly podcast summary and backstage pass to the journal and its editors. I'm Dr. Carolyn Lam, associate editor from the National Heart Center and Duke National University of Singapore.

                                                What do salty, Chinese meals, neurotransmitters, cancer, and pulmonary arterial hypertension have in common? Well, you are not going to want to miss this week's feature discussion. It's going to reveal a new therapeutic approach to pulmonary arterial hypertension that may just surprise you, coming up right after these summaries.

                                                Do congenital heart defects signal a familial predisposition to cardiovascular disease? Well, this question was addressed in this week's first original paper from first and corresponding author, Dr. Auger, from University of Montreal Hospital Research Center in Quebec, Canada. Dr. Auger and colleagues aimed to determine whether the risk of cardiovascular disorders later in life was higher in women who had newborns with congenital heart defects. To answer the question, they studied a cohort of more than one million women who had delivered infants between 1989 and 2013 in Quebec. They showed for the first time that congenital heart defects in offspring were associated with increased risk of maternal cardiovascular morbidity later in life, including atherosclerotic disease, cardiac hospitalization, and cardiac transplantation. The association with subsequent cardiovascular morbidity risk was present for both critical and noncritical congenital heart defects. Thus, women who have given birth to offspring with congenital heart defects may benefit from early attention to traditional cardiovascular risk factors and more aggressive primary prevention strategies.

                                                Acute myocardial infarction, or AMI, is a major cardiovascular complication of non-cardiac surgery, but what are the outcomes following perioperative AMI? This question was answered in the next paper from co-corresponding authors, Dr. Smilowitz and Berger, from New York University School of Medicine. The authors identified more than 8,000 patients who were diagnosed with AMI during hospitalization for major non-cardiac surgery using the 2014 US Nationwide Readmission Database. They found that perioperative AMI after non-cardiac surgery was associated with a high in-hospital mortality and a 19% risk of 30-day hospital readmission among survivors. The majority of hospitalizations after perioperative AMI were because of infectious, cardiovascular, or bleeding complications. Recurrent AMI occurred in 11% of patients re-hospitalized after perioperative AMI. At six months after perioperative AMI, more than 36% of patients were re-hospitalized, and the overall risk of in-hospital deaths was almost 18%. Thus, hospital readmissions and mortality among patients with perioperative AMI pose a significant burden to the healthcare system. Strategies to improve outcomes of surgical patients early after perioperative AMI are warranted.

                                                What is the recent status of hypertension in China? Co-corresponding authors, Dr. Wang and Gao, from Fuwai Hospital, Peking Union Medical College, and Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in China used a stratified, multistage, random sampling method to obtain a nationally representative sample of more than 450,000 residents from 31 provinces in mainland China from 2012 to 2015. The authors found that more than 23% of Chinese aged 18 years or old had hypertension, and that's equivalent to an estimated 284.5 million individuals. The prevalence of hypertension was similar in rural and urban settings, whereas three municipalities, mainly Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai had the highest prevalence of hypertension. Almost half the hypertensive population was aware of their hypertension. About 41% were treated, and only 15% achieved a blood pressure control. Among treated patients, barely 32% were prescribed two or more antihypertensive medications. Thus, this study revealed a considerable prevalence of hypertension in Chinese adults, as well as low awareness and control rates, representing an urgent public health message in China.

                                                Patients with systemic sclerosis-associated pulmonary arterial hypertension have a far worse prognosis than those with idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension. But why is this the case? In the next paper, from co-corresponding authors, Dr. Hsu and Dr. Kass, from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, these authors tested whether the disparity involved underlying differences in myofilament function. They studied cardiac myocytes isolated from the right ventricular septal endomyocardial biopsies from patients with systemic sclerosis-associated pulmonary arterial hypertension, idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension, or systemic sclerosis with exertional dyspnea but without pulmonary arterial hypertension. They also looked at control right ventricular septal tissue obtained from non-diseased donor hearts.

                                                They found that right ventricular myofilaments isolated from humans with systemic sclerosis-associated pulmonary arterial hypertension exhibited diminished contractile force and abnormal calcium sensitivity versus control myofilaments. This is in sharp contrast to the hypercontractile compensation in idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension. Systemic sclerosis patients with dyspnea and only exercise-induced pulmonary hypertension exhibited an intermediate right ventricular myocardial filament phenotype. These myofilament contractile abnormalities correlated strongly with in vivo right ventricular function at rest and right ventricular contractile reserve during exercise, suggesting a central role of right ventricular myofilament dysfunction in systemic sclerosis-associated pulmonary arterial hypertension.

                                                In summary, these findings uncover key deficiencies in the right ventricles of systemic sclerosis-associated pulmonary arterial hypertension, and these findings suggest that therapies targeted at right ventricular myofilament contractile dysfunction may prove particularly useful for this vulnerable subpopulation. That wraps it up for our summaries. Now, for our feature discussion.

                                                Today's feature paper promises a new therapeutic approach in pulmonary arterial hypertension. We know that pulmonary arterial hypertension is a rare disease, but nonetheless it casts a large shadow because it most commonly afflicts young women and remains a disabling disease. Despite treatment advanced in the last 20 years, high-risk patients still succumb at a rate of 15% annually. Moreover, our most effective therapy is a continuous infusion of parenteral prostacyclin, which is both cumbersome and expensive. Thus, there remains an urgent need for better therapies to improve survival and quality of life. Today's feature paper introduces a novel approach to this.

                                                I'm so pleased to have the corresponding author, Dr. Sylvia Cohen-Kaminsky, from Inserm, Paris, France, as well as associate editor Dr. Charlie Lowenstein, from University of Rochester, to discuss today's special paper. You know, I'm gonna start with Charlie, because you have a way of explaining things and just putting the background to mechanistic papers so well. Could you do that for us, please?

Dr Charlie Lowenstein:  Sure. When I started in research, I worked in a neuroscience laboratory. One of the things we studied was glutamate and its class of receptors. Glutamate, as you know, is one of the major neurotransmitters in the brain. The brain releases small amounts of glutamate, which acts as a messenger, neurons talking to other neurons. But when there's a stroke, the brain releases huge amounts of glutamate, and it's actually toxic and can cause damage, and mediate neuronal damage and cell death. Glutamate is a hot topic in the world of neuroscience. But in the cardiovascular field, people don't know much about glutamate. They don't appreciate glutamate as being important at all. So, I have a question for you, Sylvia. How did you start to get interested in glutamate and its family of receptors?

Dr Sylvia Cohen-Kaminsky:          It started around 2000, and since 2000 we are having some clues about peripheral glutamate receptor in different cells in different organ. But basically, for vascular cells and for the topic of PAH, there was two things that make me thought about it. First of all, it was shown that the NMDA receptor contributes to the proliferation of different cancer cell types. Human tumor cells express the NMDA receptor, then an NMDA-receptor antagonist may inhibit cancer cell growth and migration. We know that pulmonary vascular cells from PAH patients have cancer-like properties. They are also proliferative and resistant to apoptosis, and they have several properties of cancer cells, such as metabolic shift and so on.

                                                In addition, not only neurons in the brain express the NMDA receptor, but also brain microvascular endothelial cells that respond to an NMDA receptor activation by gross production, disruption of endothelial cell barrier, and monocyte transmigration. All these three processes are relevant to PAH development. That's why I thought that perhaps an NMDA receptor is expressed on microvascular cells from the lung, and perhaps we could have a process involving an NMDA receptor in this vascular remodeling.

Dr Charlie Lowenstein:  As you know, there are three flavors of glutamate receptors. How did you discover that there was one particular kind, the NMDA receptor, that was really important for smooth muscle cells?

Dr Sylvia Cohen-Kaminsky:          You are right. We did analysis of mRNA expression, and most of the known receptor in the brain, either metabotropic or ... ionotropic, sorry, indeed expressed in vascular cells and they may cooperate to activate this NMDA receptor exactly as it happens in the brain. We didn't work that on these other receptor, but we are pretty sure they are at work in cooperation with the NMDA receptor. Why though an NMDA receptor? Because it's an ion channel permeable to calcium, and the calcium is an event which can be important in cell proliferation. In addition, the first thing we have shown in these remodeled vessels when we did mass spectrometry imaging was increased level of glutamate and glutamine, its precursor. That was also an additional element that makes us think about this NMDA receptor.

Dr Charlie Lowenstein:  I want to go from the receptor to glutamate. There are three or four amazing things about your paper. One of them is that you suggest that cells in the vascular are releasing glutamate, which is a neurotransmitter. Do you think those are the smooth muscle cells that are talking to other smooth muscle cells by releasing these messenger molecules?

Dr Sylvia Cohen-Kaminsky:          Yes. Smooth muscle cells are talking to other smooth muscle cells. But we also did some work on endothelial cells, and they are also able to release this glutamate. So we think that vascular cells in the vascular wall are discussing together through glutamate, although we don't know yet the normal function of this NMDA receptor in the vascular system. However, in the pathology it's very clear that there is this release. What is very interesting is that this release can be triggered by pathways which are already down-regulated in PAH, such as the endothelin-1 pathway.

Dr Charlie Lowenstein:  Another remarkable part of your observation is that the signaling with glutamate and glutamate receptors is hyperactivated in the setting of a major human disease, pulmonary artery hypertension. How did you figure out that glutamate is so important in this special disease?

Dr Sylvia Cohen-Kaminsky:          Because we showed, as I already told you, this glutamate accumulation in the remodeled vessel. We used this mass spectrometry imaging which allows analysis of metabolites directly in the remodeled vessels from sections performed from extended lengths. We saw this glutamate accumulation together with glutamine accumulation, so the ligand was overexpressed. In addition, when doing western blots from these remodeled tissue dissected from ongoing arteries, we have shown that we have a particular phosphorylation of this receptor which is very well-known in the CNS. This phosphorylation is involved in sending the receptor to the membrane and stabilizing the receptor to the membrane. Having this phosphorylation means that NMDA receptor is engaged, activated in the remodeled vessels in situ.

Dr Charlie Lowenstein:  In an experimental model, you explored the role of glutamate in two very nice, complementary ways. One is with a genetic approach, the NMDA receptor deficiency. The other is using drugs. What were the drugs, what were the pharmacology that you used to block glutamate's transmission, and how did that affect the mice?

Dr Sylvia Cohen-Kaminsky:          We used drugs that are very well known in the CNS. We used two drugs. One is memantine, which is already commercialized for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. The other one is MK-801, which has been produced initially as a potential pharmacological drug but it was too potent to be used in the CNS. Therefore, this drug is only used in research at the moment. But these two drugs were able to act on this vascular remodeling and a number of PAH parameters. We have explored at least 12 parameters involved in this animal model of PAH, and hemodynamic stable parameters of hemodynamics including intra-arterial pressure, vascular remodeling, right ventricular remodeling with different parameters that shows a certain index. The cardiomyocyte hypertrophy, the fibrosis, the inflammation inside the right heart and around remodeled vessels, all these parameters were modified by the drug.

                                                In addition, in vivo we have shown the destruction of the NMDA receptor glutamate axis with decreased engagement of the NMDA receptor in pulmonary arteries by following this phosphorylation I mentioned, decrease of apoptosis resistance and also proliferation. This was shown also after the treatment with the drugs, and also decrease of endothelial cell dysfunction that could be followed in the blood through selecting those H.

Dr Charlie Lowenstein:  Your results with this drug were really impressive. I love that part of your study. You showed when you block glutamate signaling, first of all, the blood vessels looked much better in a model of pulmonary artery hypertension. In an experimental model, blocking glutamate transmission really improved the way the vessels look. But secondly, what was really amazing was, normally in humans one of the big problems with pulmonary artery hypertension, as you said, is the right ventricle gets inflamed and fibrotic, and a lot of patients die from complications of right ventricular dysfunction. In your model, when you treat with MK-801, blocking glutamate receptor, the right ventricle looks a lot better. It was really an impressive part of your study.

Dr Sylvia Cohen-Kaminsky:          I think that this is view on the effect of the vessels themselves, then the right heart can recover. But we may have a direct effect in the heart. If you remember this Chinese restaurant syndrome, when you eat too much Chinese food, which is full of glutamate, you have some cardiac involvement, arrhythmia, and so on. Initially, toxicologists thought that it passed through the central nervous system. But then they realized that maybe the NMDA receptor is expressed in cardiac cells, and indeed it is expressed and is colocalized with the ryanodine receptor, meaning that it could have a function in the heart as well. But this has, of course, to be explored precisely. We know from the transplantation that, when we transplant on with the lung, the heart can recover very well. We may have these two effects. One due to the relief on vascular remodeling, and the other perhaps a direct effect on the heart.

Dr Carolyn Lam:                You know, I have to chime in now. That cuts too close to home with the Chinese food and glutamate. First and foremost, I just really have to say, Charlie and Sylvia, it's people like you who make basic science come alive and simply extraordinarily exciting. Taking glutamate, something that we've talked about in the context of Chinese food and neurotransmitters, and therefore showing the potential to even repurpose perhaps some drugs for pulmonary arterial hypertension. So let me just round up by asking you, what do you think our next steps, how far are these findings away from clinical application? Perhaps, Charlie, your thoughts?

Dr Charlie Lowenstein:  While I think that the use of MK-801 to treat excess monosodium glutamate during a Chinese meal, maybe that's a little bit premature. I'm much more excited about the idea of using glutamate-receptor antagonists to treat or prevent or even reverse pulmonary artery hypertension, both its vascular and cardiac complications. I'd love to ask Sylvia, do you think these medications in this class, do you think NMDA-receptor antagonists are ready for clinical trials?

Dr Sylvia Cohen-Kaminsky:          In fact, they are not ready as they are. We have a program in which we have designed hypothesized new NMDA-receptor antagonist that do not go to the brain, because we want that treating PAH has to be safe, and we don't want to interfere with brain system. So we created this new NMDA-receptor antagonist that do not go to the brain. At the moment, we are in the process of the documentation. We have two patents for two series of molecules, and we expect the drug conjugate by the end of this year. To reconjugate means that we have a number of properties on this drug, the pharmacokinetics, metabolism, selectivity profile, toxicity, and so on. We are doing all this physical chemical properties, and of course validation of these new molecules in the animal models as therapy alone and also as add-on therapy with existing therapies, such as these vasodilators. We hope that we can have an additive effect between an NMDA-receptor antagonist and current PAH drugs.

Dr Charlie Lowenstein:  Sylvia, as you know, drug companies about 10 or 20 years ago invented all these amazing glutamate-receptor antagonists to treat central nervous disease like stroke. One of the amazing things about your discovery is you're suggesting that glutamate receptors in the periphery are great targets as well. The exciting thing about your observation is you're really opening up new therapeutic approaches for targeting neurotransmitters in the periphery. I think your discoveries are tremendously exciting and could open up new avenues in treatment of a disease, pulmonary artery hypertension, for which there really aren't effective therapies right now.

Dr Carolyn Lam:                I couldn't have said it better. Thank you so much, Charlie. Thank you so much, Sylvia.

                                                See, listeners? Aren't you glad you heard it here right on Circulation on the Run? Don't forget to tune in again next week.