Discovery Can Pave the Way for More Effective Cholesterol Medicine

Research sheds new light on how the body converts the bad kind of cholesterol. The discovery could lead to new and potentially more effective medicine.

Cholesterol. Image credit: tasnimnews.com (CC BY 4.0)

More than 600,000 Danes are being treated with cholesterol lowering medicine. 98 per cent of them are treated with statins, which curb the body's own production of cholesterol so that the level of cholesterol falls. However, statins also give rise to the body forming more of a harmful protein -- known as PCSK9 -- which counters the effect of the statins.

New research from Aarhus University has now uncovered the way in which PCSK9 breaks down the LDL receptors, which are a kind of receptor molecule that absorbs the bad LDL cholesterol in the blood into the liver.

This discovery makes it possible to develop potentially more efficient and also cheaper PCSK9 inhibiting medicine, which is the new hope for cholesterol treatment.

PCSK9 is captured by specific molecules in the liver called heparan sulfate proteoglycans (HSPG), which subsequently lead to the breaking down of the LDL receptor. The consequence is less LDL receptor in the liver, higher LDL cholesterol in the blood and an increased risk of blood clots in the heart.

If this process is inhibited, the LDL receptor is protected against degradation, and the amount of cholesterol in the blood falls.

With the discovery, the researchers have provided one of the pieces that has been missing in the puzzle of understanding PCSK9, and this opens up for the development of a new type of medicine that can potentially work far better than statins.

PCSK9 inhibiting medicine is already available on the market, but due to high costs it is only offered to patients who are particularly at risk, as well as those who do not have benefit from or are intolerant to statins. Using the new knowledge about PCSK9, the researchers from Aarhus have begun to develop new medicine that is now ready for the first tests on patients.

The first medicine must first undergo comprehensive testing and will first be available for patients in five years at the earliest. (Tasnim News Agency)

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