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Common Genetic Variations Predict Patient Response to Novel Beta Blocker
Therapy
TORONTO, Sept. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Bucindolol, an investigational, pharmacologically unique beta-blocker and mild vasodilator, significantly reduces hospitalization and death among heart failure patients with very favorable genotypes, according to results of a large DNA study presented today as a poster at the annual meeting of the Heart Failure Society of America. Researchers found that common genetic variations can predict which heart failure patients will have the greatest therapeutic response to bucindolol.
ARCA biopharma has submitted a New Drug Application (NDA) for bucindolol to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of chronic heart failure.
"The ability to predict patient response to bucindolol makes it easier for physicians to match the right patient to the right medicine, potentially avoiding months of trial-and-error therapy and helping very sick heart failure patients achieve better outcomes sooner," said Christopher O'Connor, M.D., Director of the Heart Center at Duke University Medical Center and presenter of the study. "This data brings us much closer to realizing the benefits of personalized medicine in heart failure."
The prospectively-designed DNA sub-study included more than 1,000 patients enrolled in the Beta-Blocker Evaluation of Survival Trial (BEST), the largest heart failure mortality trial conducted primarily in the United States. Researchers evaluated therapeutic response to bucindolol among patients with genetic variations, or polymorphisms, in two adrenergic receptors that help regulate cardiac function: beta 1 389 Arg/Gly and alpha 2c 322-325 WT/Del. Researchers identified three distinct genotypes that predict the effect of bucindolol: very favorable (47% of BEST patients), favorable (40%) and unfavorable (13%).
In the study, patients with the very favorable genotype
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