Developing New Drugs to Treat Congestive Heart Failure and Asthma
A partnership between URI, Salve Regina and Celgen LLC.
Collaborators
- Dr. Abraham Kovoor, University of Rhode Island
- Dr. David Rowley, University of Rhode Island
- Dr. Jeremy Celver, Chief Scientist, Celgen LLC
- Dr. Bernard Munge, Salve Regina University
Summary
Congestive heart failure and asthma are two devastating diseases affecting Americans today. Congestive heart failure is a leading cause of death in the United States and costs more than $20 billion in lost productivity and health care expenses. Asthma afflicts more than 20 million Americans and costs more than $3 billion annually in lost productivity.
Several different classes of medications are presently used to treat congestive heart failure and asthma. Unfortunately, many patients respond poorly to the presently available drugs or are not able to tolerate these drugs due to side-effects. For example, members of an important drug class used to treat asthma, called beta-agonists, work by dilating the air passages of the lungs, but prolonged drug-treatment can produce tolerance in many patients. In other words, the drugs cease to be effective after prolonged use. Thus there is an urgent medical need for new drugs with novel mechanisms of action for the treatment of both congestive heart failure and asthma.
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