"PET imaging of protein clumps may be eventually used in patients to identify structural changes in the heart as the disease progresses, and this information likely holds prognostic value," says Peter Rainer, M.D., Ph.D., a former postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins who is now at the Medical University of Graz in Austria. "It could be used as a nice measure of the effect of an intervention to halt or reverse disease progression."
In future experiments, the research team plans to confirm its results in more human tissue samples. The investigators also hope to identify a drug or small molecule to prevent desmin from forming clumps.
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"There is a lot of emphasis placed on the role of genes in modern times, but we're born with our genes and at present we can do very little about the ones we have," says Agnetti. "I think the next step is to follow up with the proteins that are dynamically modified in response to environment, which places a larger emphasis on lifestyle intervention to help prevent diseases. Natural compounds like EGCG in green tea and modified dietary interventions could play a role in keeping us healthy."
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Additional authors include Nazareno Paolocci, Peihong Dong, Yuchuan Wang, Catherine Foss, Steven An, Martin Pomper and Gordon Tomaselli of Johns Hopkins; Matteo Sorge of the University of Turin; Justyna Fert-Bober, Ronald Holewinski and Jennifer Van Eyk of Cedars-Sinai; Alessandra Baracca and Giancarlo Solaini of the University of Bologna and Charles Glabe of the University of California, Irvine.
The study was funded by grants from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (R01 HL107361 and P01 HL107153), the American Heart Association (2SDG9210000 and 16IRG27240002) and the Magic That Matters Foundation.
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