Treatment May Reduce Death from Sepsis

[Guest guest]

This would be wonderful! Right now there is only one drug out there

specifically formulated to treat sepsis. It works sometimes, but not always,

and it's

all we've got, which is scary! Cary

[Guest guest]

Source: University of Virginia Health System Released: Wed

12-May-2004, 06:10 ET

Treatment May Reduce Death from Sepsis

Description

An experimental therapy that combines an antibiotic with a synthetic

anti-inflammatory drug, designed at the University of Virginia Health

System, has shown early promise in dramatically reducing death from sepsis,

a life-threatening infection that kills 210,000 Americans each year.

An experimental therapy that combines an antibiotic with a synthetic

anti-inflammatory drug, designed at the University of Virginia Health

System, has shown early promise in dramatically reducing death from sepsis,

a life-threatening infection that kills 210,000 Americans each year.

³This anti-inflammatory drug, called ATL 146e, may prove to be an effective

new therapy application for the treatment of sepsis, a very serious disease

for which there aren¹t very good treatments today,² said Linden,

professor of internal medicine at U.Va. and co-author of a study on sepsis

and ATL 146e found in the April 28 issue of the Journal of Infectious

Diseases.

For decades, antibiotics have been the standard treatment for sepsis, an

inflammatory response to infection that can lead to a severe drop in blood

pressure, cardiovascular collapse and death. But antibiotics have not been

effective in treating infections once they have spread throughout the body,

a condition that occurs in patients whose natural immune systems aren¹t

working properly.

³Patients often die from sepsis even after the underlying bacterial

infection has been controlled by antibiotics,² said study co-author Dr. W.

Scheld, professor of infectious diseases at U.Va. and an authority

on sepsis. Scheld believes that complications from the body¹s inflammatory

response to the infection, rather than the infection itself, could be

contributing to patient deaths.

The study, funded by two grants from the National Institutes of Health,

demonstrated that ATL 146e used in combination with an antibiotic had a

dramatic effect in improving survival in mice. In the experiment, mice with

sepsis were treated with the antibiotic ceftriaxone alone, with ATL 146e

alone and with both ceftriaxone and ATL 146e. Nearly 80 percent treated with

just ATL 146e died within 30 hours, and 60 percent of the mice treated with

ceftriaxone alone died within 96 hours. But none of the mice treated with

both drugs died. ³In discussing this, we developed the idea that we could

kill bacteria with an antibiotic and protect patients by reducing the body¹s

inflammatory response,² Linden said. ³We used ATL 146e, and it worked

surprisingly well.²

ATL 146e already has been subject to Phase I human safety trials. The U.Va.

research team hopes to complete a Phase II clinical trial for the treatment

of sepsis within 18 months, and, if successful, a larger Phase III trial one

a year after that. ³If the clinical trials are successful, ATL 146e or a

similar compound could be clinically available to help treat sepsis within

three to four years,² Linden said.

Adenosine is a naturally occurring substance found in the body. Its role is

to activate receptors that suppress inflammatory responses. But adenosine is

degraded rapidly after being released from tissue. ATL 146e is a form of

synthetic adenosine that produces more profound and prolonged

immunosuppression than regular adenosine due to its specific action on

adenosine receptors.

ATL 146e is owned by Adenosine Therapeutics, LLC, a Charlottesville-based

start-up company co-owned by the University of Virginia Alumni Patent

Foundation, U.Va. scientists, including Linden and Scheld, and other

investors. For more information about ATL 146e, visit the website:

http://www.adenrx.com.