Diagnostic miRNAs for therapy-induced cardiovascular injury

Detection of drug-induced cardiovascular injury remains a major safety issue in drug development. While blood troponins represent the current gold standard to detect severe myocardial damage, novel biomarkers of early signs of cardiovascular are needed. Genomic signalling molecules known as miRNAs have recently emerged as promising biomarkers of cardiovascular injury.

Circulating cardiovascular injury-associated miRNA in serum/plasma samples in patients can serve as early biomarkers for acute drug-induced cardiovascular injury. Furthermore, these cardiovascular injury-associated miRNA biomarkers could be used by pharmaceutical companies to identify, at an early stage, any cardiovascular adverse effects of their drug candidates, allowing them to make changes and avoid wasting valuable resources developing a drug candidate that would ultimately fail in the clinic due to its cardiovascular adverse effects. The biomarkers could also be used in a health care setting to monitor patients who are undergoing treatment with a drug known to have cardiovascular adverse effects (such as some drugs used for chemotherapy).

This novel innovation will bring benefits to patients, doctors, clinical researchers and the pharmaceutical industry. Apart from the obvious scientific and health benefits, there will also be economic benefits. The identification of reliable biomarkers will lead to more accurate and cost effective diagnostics and identification of drug side effects. It will enable improvements to be made in the long term cardiovascular injury related prognosis of patients with solid tumours and haematological malignancies which will help to reduce NHS costs associated with hospitalisation and ongoing care.