Optoceutics is per se a new research field, well beyond long-established pharmaceutics and even the more recent electroceutic methods. Organic nanotechnology has been very rarely proposed in the field of regenerative medicine for cardiac cells, such as cardiomyocytes and endothelial progenitor cells. Thus, LION-HEARTED goes well beyond the current state of the art, since it exploited for the first time the synergistic combination of optical stimulation with organic nanotechnologies, and it addressed cardiovascular (CV) diseases under a completely different perspective, without the need for viral transfer or gene therapies.
The results achieved by LION-HEARTED activities represent distinct advancements respect to the current state-of-the-art, and fully confirmed the huge potential impact of LION-HEARTED approach in CV diseases.
The improved life expectancy in industrialized countries will result in elderly population with increased perspective incidence of heart failure (HF). HF is regarded as a major public health issue, with a prevalence of >6.5 million patients in EU and >23 million worldwide, which is dramatically rising over the next few decades. Accordingly, there is a lifetime risk of one in five of developing this syndrome. Life expectancy after HF diagnosis ranges from 50% at 5 years to 10% at 10 years. As a consequence, HF displays the greatest negative impact on quality of life leading to the disruption of daily management and increasing dependence on care-givers. HF accounts for ≈1-2% of European hospital admissions, with 24% of patients rehospitalized within the 30-day post discharge period, and accounts for 2% of the total healthcare expenditure in western countries. Despite technological and pharmacological advances fostering early diagnosis and aggressive therapeutic interventions for CV disorders, no new effective drug has been launched on the market to prevent or cure the lethal effects of HF in the last twenty years.
An innovative approach to preserve or, at least, restore the efficiency of cardiac contractility and rescue systemic blood perfusion is, therefore, required. Other than heart transplantation for end-stage HF, there are no effective therapies to treat this syndrome.
Overall, LION-HEARTED successfully addressed hitherto unmet therapeutic needs by envisaging an unexplored, yet technologically feasible approach. The realized proof-of-concept device represents a breakthorugh technology to induce cardiac repair, and will deserve full exploitation in the next future.
