Published Findings In Human Gene Therapy Methods Journal Demonstrate Cardium's New Catheter-Based Method Significantly Boosts Gene Delivery To The Heart

Cardium Therapeutics CXM today announced the publication of preclinical findings demonstrating that cardiac ischemia plays an important role in adenovector gene delivery (transfection) in mammalian hearts. The new findings were published in the peer-reviewed journal Human Gene Therapy Methods in an article entitled "Ischemia-Reperfusion Increases Transfection Efficiency of Intracoronary Adenovirus type 5 in Pig Heart in Situ," which is available online at http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/hgtb.2012.048. The published findings demonstrate that Cardium's innovative technique employing transient cardiac ischemia can be used to dramatically enhance gene delivery and transfection efficiency after one-time intracoronary administration of adenovector in mammalian hearts. Two consecutive but brief periods of coronary artery occlusion combined with co-administration of nitroglycerin increased both adenovector presence (measured by PCR) and transgene expression (assessed by luciferase activity) by over two orders of magnitude (>100 fold) in the heart, as compared to prior intracoronary artery delivery methods.