27 Proteins that May Predict Heart Disease Risk

In a new study, scientists have reported findings that show a blood test can be used to predict Cardiac Vascular Disease (CVD). The research, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, opens the door to more individualized treatment plans for CVD. It may also improve the speed at which new CVD drugs can be identified and developed. When a new drug is developed, scientists have to make sure that it is both effective and safe. This is a rigorous process that can often take many years. While important, this significantly slows down the speed at which new drugs can be developed, and also increases the costs.

One way of increasing the speed and reducing the cost of drug development without sacrificing efficacy or safety is to use a surrogate biomarker as a predictor of risk. If a surrogate can reliably predict risk, then some stages of clinical trials can be streamlined. Finding a surrogate that can accurately predict the risk of certain diseases can also benefit patients directly. If a clinician can measure a reliable surrogate they can potentially prevent a disease before it has developed, reducing the risks to the patient.

“For situations where clinical cardiovascular outcomes studies are required today, a surrogate enables unsafe or ineffective candidate drugs to be terminated early and cheaply and supports the acceleration of safe and effective drugs. Participants in the trials do not have to have events or die in order to contribute to the signal.” said Dr. Stephen Williams — Chief Medical Officer at SomaLogic, and the corresponding author of the present study. “In personalized medicine, a surrogate enables cost-effective allocation of treatments to the people who need them the most, and potentially increases the uptake of newer more effective drugs so that outcomes are improved,” said Dr. Williams.

In 2004 the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published a report Trusted Source recommending that researchers identify biomarker surrogates that could help in CVD drug development and improve individualized patient care.