Rhythm Search Developments Ltd. was founded four years ago based on the research of Michael Walker, a professor in the Dept. of Pharmacology and Therapeutics. It is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Nortran Pharmaceuticals.
Nortran's main focus is the development of antiarrhythmic drugs to prevent ventricular arrhythmias, which are the major cause of sudden cardiac death in heart attack victims.
"We want to get drugs out there that are significantly better than anything on the market now," Walker said.
A heart attack occurs when one of the heart's arteries is blocked by a blood clot. This chokes off the blood supply and precious oxygen to a part of the heart muscle, which then begins to die.
As the muscle dies, it generates aberrant electrical activity which can interfere with the heart's normal electrical signal. This may result in ventricular fibrillation, in which the heart ceases its normal rhythmic beating and begins to quiver uncontrollably.
The heart cannot pump blood in this state and the victim dies within minutes.
In a hospital, a patient can have a regular heart rhythm restored with a defibrillator--the device that uses paddles to give patients an electric shock. Otherwise, there are existing antiarrhythmic drugs, but their benefits are severely limited by adverse side effects.
Researchers in Walker's lab have designed drugs that prevent the damaged portion of the heart from generating abnormal electrical activity, without causing toxic side effects.
This new type of antiarrhythmic remains dormant until activated by the specific conditions found during a heart attack in dying tissues, dramatically increasing a patient's chance of survival.
"We think we can make a drug that's safe enough to give as a pill a day to the millions of people who are at risk of a heart attack, in the same way people take aspirin or cholesterol-reducing drugs," Walker said.
The first generation of these antiarrhythmic drugs will enter clinical trials in China and Brazil later this year, but Nortran has much greater expectations of subsequent generations of drugs now in the pipeline.
Other UBC scientists, Dr. David Quastel, a professor in Pharmacology and Therapeutics, and Dr. Bernard MacLeod, associate professor in the Dept. of Anesthesia, have collaborated to develop novel analgesics which appear to work differently than existing analgesics.
In association with Nortran, a first generation compound could go into clinical trials in Vancouver by the end of the year.