Despite the fact that chemotherapy can be a lifesaving therapy for patients with disease, a portion of these meds can harm the heart. A group led by scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has recently fostered a nanoparticle test that can identify a mark of heart harm from chemotherapy.
The exploration of different avenues regarding the test also uncovered that in mice with disease, irregular fasting before chemotherapy can forestall this heart damage marker from emerging, prompting saved cardiovascular capability and delayed endurance.
The review, which was published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, zeroed in on autophagy—a cycle that phones use to eliminate pointless or broken parts. There is a delicate balance between the defensive and harmful effects of this cycle: decreased levels of autophagy have been linked to cardiovascular disease and other conditions; however, autophagy can also be an important system of cell death.
“With our nanoparticle, we show that intermittent fasting—drinking water but no food for 24 hours before chemotherapy—restores autophagy, reduces heart muscle damage, and even increases overall lifespan.”
Sosnovik, the senior author of the study.
Through one or the other, fluorescent or attractive reverberation imaging, David E. Sosnovik, MD, head of the Program in Cardiovascular Imaging at MGH’s Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, and his partners fostered an autophagy-identifying nanoparticle that permits agents to gauge autophagy’s action harmlessly inside the body.
When the researchers intravenously infused the nanoparticles into mice with disease, they could gauge changes in autophagy in heart tissue under various circumstances, like after chemotherapy. For instance, the nanoparticles recognized decreased autophagy action in heart cells presented to the chemotherapy drug doxorubicin, which can cause heart harm. Nonetheless, treatment with statins or fasting before doxorubicin treatment permitted the creatures’ heart cells to keep up with typical autophagy action.
Sosnovik, the senior writer of the review, says that irregular fasting — drinking water yet no nourishment for 24 hours before the chemotherapy is given — reestablishes autophagy, kills the harm to the heart muscle, and even works on general endurance.
Sosnovik stresses that reciprocal exploration in people is required, particularly since the impacts of fasting on autophagy in cancer are hazy. “We are not proposing that patients today get quick before their chemotherapy.” “This is something that should be concentrated on additionally in controlled and fiery clinical preliminaries,” he says. “Nonetheless, our paper gives significant experience that might influence clinical consideration soon.”
Likewise, the group’s autophagy-recognizing nanoparticles could be utilized to acquire a superior understanding of the role of autophagy in a wide scope of illnesses.
More information: Howard H. Chen et al, A nanoparticle probe for the imaging of autophagic flux in live mice via magnetic resonance and near-infrared fluorescence, Nature Biomedical Engineering (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41551-022-00904-3
Journal information: Nature Biomedical Engineering
