Soon, World's First Vaccine to Prevent Heart Disease

Be it the elderly or the young, heart ailments have become common lifestyle problems. Cardiovascular diseases impose a serious health threat with increased risk of stroke or heart attacks.But, here's a piece of good news. Scientists are one step closer to developing the world's first vaccine that will reduce immune-based inflammation in the arteries, leading to decreased plaque build-up.The fundamental discovery was made in the laboratory of Klaus Ley, a prominent vascular biologist of La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology (LIAI). It has shown positive signs for the development of an autoantigen-specific vaccine for reducing the amount of atherosclerotic plaques in mice. Atherosclerosis is a chronic inflammatory disease of the arterial walls in which they thicken due to the accumulation of cholesterol and triglycerides."The T-cell peptide-based vaccine could aid in preventing heart disease and stop or reduce disease progression. The vaccine could also target strokes which are a product of plaque buildup in arteries," said Harley Tse, Professor of Immunology and Microbiology in Wayne State University's School of Medicine.Shaw and Tse demonstrated that two T cell epitopes of the autoantigen "apoB100" are deeply involved in the development of the disease. Although T-cells of the immune system are known to participate in the development of this heart disease, what directs these T-cells to act has not been elucidated."With the discovery of the disease-causing T-cell epitopes, we can now manipulate the activities of the T-cells responding to these epitopes to control the disease," Shaw said.Shaw and Tse conceptualized that finding the "apoB100" epitopes capable of stimulating the disease causing (atherogenic) T-cells is a prerequisite to understand how these T-cells are involved in heart disease development and how to control their adverse effects. They identified two short sequences of "apoB100" that were able to direct specific T-cells to proliferate as well as to cause worsening atherosclerosis."This discovery is significant because it identifies the target T-cells and makes it possible to manipulate this population of pathologic T-cells away from their harmful activities," Shaw and Tse said. The study was published in the Journal of Immunology and Clinical Research.