Queen’s researchers find another use for Viagra

Since its introduction in Canada 10 years ago, Viagra has proven to be a wonder drug for men suffering erectile dysfunction.

In that time, it has also been found useful in fighting sickness among mountain climbers, pulmonary hypertension and helping people who have experienced congestive heart failure.

Now a team of researchers at Queen’s University may have found another practical application for the little blue pill – reducing blood clotting around stents that have been implanted in coronary arteries to maintain blood flow.

“The stent works like a charm with respect to re-opening the blood vessel,” said Donald Maurice, professor of pharmacology and toxicology, who heads the project at Queen’s, “but 60% of blood clots form on stents unexpectedly and incredibly quickly, and the end result is usually death.”

After two years of laboratory work, the team of researchers, headed by PhD student Lindsay Wilson, got the results they were seeking. They found that Viagra inhibits the cellular enzyme PDE5 which in turn inhibits the platelet activation that causes blood clotting.

It will now be up to other scientists who perform clinical trials with animals or humans to pick up where the Queen’s group leaves off.

“We’re lab-based scientists figuring out mechanisms and how drugs work,” said Maurice. “We were interested in the enzyme that Viagra inhibits. What we’re doing is very much contrived and reductionist.

“Whether this would be a benefit to the average 70-kilogram guy, we really don’t know.”

Even though it’s been six months since they published their paper, the Queen’s scientists haven’t been contacted about their discovery by the Ontario Heart and Stroke Foundation -which funded half of the project – but the foundation’s director of research said he’s been watching the team’s progress with interest.

“It’s big. It’s good old Canadian know-how, linking two disparate things and bringing them together,” said Marco Di Buono. “This is clearly work building on an existing body of literature. It’s critically important that the ideas don’t just stop. We will call Dr. Maurice to give him reassurances.”

Di Buono said that Ontario Heart and Stroke holds the intellectual property rights to all the research work that it funds in order to protect the scientists’ ability to continue their work. They may be able to link the Queen’s findings with a clinical trials group operating somewhere else in Ontario or Canada.

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March 21, 2009 | Filed Under Viagra Online 
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