CorDynamics

Go “RED” for Women Day

Friday is “Go RED for Women Day!”

I’m Wearing Red on Friday.

I’ve always loved to wear red.

Maybe it stems from my time as an undergrad at the University of Wisconsin, where the school colors fly red and white and one of the favorite anthems is “Go Big Red.”

Or maybe, it’s because working for CorDynamics, I’m consumed with all things cardiovascular, have learned about heart disease and the startling statistics as they relate to women.

Do You Know These Heart Facts?

• Heart disease—including heart attacks and strokes—is the number 1 killer of women.

• Heart disease is the cause of death for 1 in 3 women.

• Women are dying at the rate of 1 per minute—many of whom never knew heart disease kills.

Many women think they are too young, too healthy or even too busy to have a heart attack. That’s what my petite, energetic mother thought when she had a stroke at 54. She fully recovered, and is now making 68 look like the new 40, thanks to those around her who knew the warning signs of a stroke and acted quickly.

Do You Know the Warning Signs of a Stroke?

• Sudden numbness or weakness of face, arm or leg, especially on one side of the body.

• Sudden confusion, trouble speaking or understanding.

• Sudden trouble seeing in one or both eyes.

• Sudden trouble walking, dizziness, loss of balance or coordination.

• Sudden severe headache with no known cause.

So on National Wear Red Day, Friday, February 3, I’ll being wearing red, to raise awareness for heart disease and in honor of my mom. I hope you join me.

Go Big Red!

Theresa Gralinski, Marketing Director

FDA Orphan Drug Designation

There are currently about 7,000 orphans out there waiting to be adopted, to be supported, to be cured. Many of us don’t even know their names: Kawasaki. Porphyria. Pulmonary Arterial Disease.

Orphan Status is a designation given by the FDA to identify rare diseases with unmet medical needs but with potentially promising compounds currently being researched. Orphan drugs receive expedited FDA reviews and fast tracks to clinical trials, providing hope for cures, treatments or comfort.

>>>>>  Nearly 2,400 experimental compounds have orphan drug designations.

>>>>>  So far, only 367 of these orphan drugs have been approved by the FDA.

Experts agree, coordinated collaboration and resources on all fronts will be the key to finding a potential drug therapy for these orphan drugs. Collaboration is also essential for the rare diseases still searching for enough answers to even begin the orphan drug development stage.

You may ask, what can I do to help? What can my organization do?

Adopt An Orphan

• Pick an orphan disease with a compound in the works or a rare disease to adopt.

• Show your support and learn more about the disease, follow related organizations on Facebook or in the news.  One that we follow on Facebook is Two Hearts Rock and Global Genes Project.

• Donate your time, participate in a sponsored event, or fundraiser.

• “Wear That You Care” on World Rare Disease Day, February 29th. Wear “jeans” for “genes” and encourage your workplace, schools, and sport teams to do so too to raise awareness for the Global Genes Project.

At CorDynamics, we sponsored a fundraising event for Hope4Bridget and Batten Disease (a rare disease) as well as continue to work with our clients on promising compounds for the potential treatment of Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension (an orphan designated rare disease).

Working together, we will continue to adopt more of these orphan diseases and meet more unmet medical needs. To learn more about this issue and how you can help, jump into today’s blog hop sponsored by the R.A.R.E Project.

Dr. Michael Gralinski, CorDynamics CEO

The Short Story on Prolonged QT Interval

Over the course of my career, I’ve been asked the following questions many times:

1. What is QT Interval Prolongation?

2. Why does it matter?

QT Interval Prolongation is an increase in the time the heart normally takes to ‘reset’ itself electrically.

QT Interval Prolongation is a critical matter in drug development for several reasons.

• Drugs that increase QT interval can make the heart vulnerable to life-threatening arrhythmias.

• It is one of the leading causes for drug withdrawal over the last 20 years.

• Screening new compounds for QT interval prolongation early in development can save millions of dollars.

Is there more you’d like to know about QT Interval prolongation? The long story perhaps?

If so, get in touch. I’m happy to elaborate further.

Best Regards,

Dr. Michael Gralinski, CorDynamics CEO

Chicago Running: A Holiday Tradition

The holidays can be especially hard when trying to keep in shape. My holiday was no exception. It started with a wonderful and indulgent Thanksgiving, followed by a very Merry Christmas in England and ended with a Happy New Year’s Eve.

Traveling over Christmas made it especially hard for me to stay in shape. I was able to fit in one run while I was in England. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but one is better than none. Fortunately, I did a lot of walking in London, so I felt a little better about not sticking to a regular running schedule.

I was amazed at how few runners I saw while I was in England. My count ended at seven runners seen in the eight days that we were there—and my running partner and I were two of them! Many Chicagoans are dedicated runners so I’m used to seeing others running all the time. It never occurred to me that other cities or countries would be so different.

I have a few races I am hoping to take on this year. The Chicago Shamrock Shuffle will be my official kick-off to the 2012 running season on the 25th of March. (St. Patrick’s Day will be another holiday to hurdle.) Once again CorDynamics is sponsoring my race and my efforts to encourage those around me to stay heart healthy. With my goals set, I’m ready to shake off the holidays and to start off the New Year happy and healthy!

Happy Trails.
Melissa Fisher, CorDynamics Operations Manager

CorDynamics Sets 2012 Trade Show Calendar

The CorDynamics team is closing out a successful year and setting the stage for 2012. Closing one calendar and turning to a new one, some of the first dates to fill in are our trade show exhibitions.

For the first time, we’ll take our booth to the Experimental Biology meeting in San Diego April 21-25. As we continue to grow the drug discovery side of our business, I look forward to attending this event and meeting with colleagues focused on this exciting and important side of drug discovery.

In addition to EB, we’ll also be exhibiting at SOT, SPS and ACT.

• Society of Toxicology 51^st Annual Meeting

San Francisco, March 11-15

• 2012 Safety Pharmacology Society Annual Meeting

Phoenix, October 1-4

• American College of Toxicology 33^rd Annual Meeting

Orlando, November 4-7

If you’re going to be at any of these meetings, please put connecting with us on your calendar.

Best Regards and Happy New Year.

Dr. Michael Gralinski, CorDynamics CEO

Fielding Facts About Sudden Cardiac Arrest in Youth Sports

Sudden Cardiac Arrest is the leading cause of death in youth sports, according to the recent Youth Sports Safety Summit. It’s a frightening reality that many parents and coaches fear, but don’t necessarily understand.

Sudden Cardiac Arrest occurs when the heart’s normal rhythm becomes severely abnormal, compromising cardiac output. These arrhythmias can be generated by a number of triggers, including direct blunt trauma to the chest or exertion stress upon a previously unrecognized vulnerable heart.

Blunt trauma is often the result of an object such as a baseball or hockey puck striking a child in the chest during the very brief period of electrical vulnerability associated with each normal heartbeat—resulting in ‘commotio cordis’, a life threatening arrhythmia that often degenerates into fatal ventricular fibrillation. Appropriate protection equipment or alternate types of baseballs/pucks can reduce the morbidity and mortality of chest trauma in young athletes.

When sports participants experience arrhythmias during exertion stress, it is often associated with previously unrecognized conditions such as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (a thickened left ventricle usually present via congenital route). Since the cardiomyopathy results in some compromised left ventricular function, an increase in hemodynamic demand places an extra burden on the abnormal heart muscle substrate. This extra burden renders the heart vulnerable to disturbances in electrophysiology, with an increased risk of severe arrhythmias. Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy can be detected by ECG screening, with follow up echocardiography where warranted.

Since screening all children for heart pathophysiology is not practiced in our current health care system, directives from the summit encourage Coaches, teams and schools to implement a strong cardiac chain of survival:

• Recognize a cardiac emergency and call 911
• Early CPR
• Early defibrillation
• Early advanced cardiac life support

While we run electrophysiology studies to make sure drugs are safe and do not cause sudden cardiac death, we continue to learn more about the condition along the way.

You want may want to checkout www.parentheartwatch.org for more information.

Best regards,

Dr. Michael Gralinski, CorDynamics CEO

Producing PAH Results: Elaborating on Collaborating

Drug development researchers have been putting a lot of emphasis on collaborating in the effort to produce safe and effective drugs as quickly as possible. This is especially true in the area of rare disease research.

The CorDynamics team collaborates day in and day out—with each other, with colleagues, with our clients and their project teams. But collaborating is kind of like parenting, you think and hope you are doing it well but there isn’t a definitive gauge to tell you if you are making progress.

Well lo and behold, a tangible affirmation of collaboration was recently celebrated in our lab. CorDynamics Senior Scientist Dr. Liomar Neves, with our colleagues at Corridor Pharmaceuticals, demonstrated the novel serotonin receptor antagonist C-122 prevents monocrotaline induced pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) in rats in a paper published in the European Journal of Pharmacology.

PAH—an orphan disease, with unmet medical treatment—is characterized by increased blood pressure in the arteries of lungs, causing dizziness, shortness of breath and can lead to heart failure. Current therapies for pulmonary artery hypertension (PAH) improve longevity and performance of daily activities in the lives of PAH patients, but do not notably affect the disease processes that lead to morbidity and mortality. Since serotonin has a definitive role in the development of PAH, the authors hypothesized that interfering with serotonin function may reduce the vascular remodeling and hemodynamic changes that occur in this preclinical model.

With the industry continuing to embrace a collaborative environment, I look forward to more research results that will ultimately provide more treatment options for patients in the future. As far as my kids and my parenting skills go, I guess I’ll have to assume no coal in their stockings means I’m doing something right and continue to believe.

‘Til we collaborate again….

Theresa Gralinski, CorDynamics Marketing Director

Finding Pull-ups Pushing 50 A Difficult Climb? Hang on to the Heart of Adventure

Pull-ups are hard and much more difficult than pushups, especially as I am pushing 50 years old. Although as I see the decreasing number of sequential push-ups possible for me, I embrace our ability to adapt to changing conditions and information in order to capably master that which used to come much more easily.

In addition to this last minute body-building, many other preparations were necessary for our October rock climbing trip at Devil’s Lake State Park in Baraboo Wisconsin with Boy Scouts of America Climbing Venture Crew 317. My friend, Steve Toth and I started Venture Crew 317 in 2003—at nearly the same time that CorDynamics, Inc. was founded. CorDynamics sponsored this climb, like many others.

The relationship between the cardiovascular symptoms such as that pounding-in-the-chest feeling, syncope and high heart rate with the adrenaline release of rock climbing had became evident to me several years earlier. I stood on top of my first rappel (lowering yourself down a rope) of a 40-foot cliff at the very same Devil’s Lake park on a dark, snowy afternoon. Steve was there goading (now in the BSA, we don’t goad, we “challenge by choice”) me over the edge. He was confident in the knots he inspected on my brand new climbing harness; I checked everything over nearly 20 times. I did make it down and my adventures on the edge began.

Fast forward to our October event with the 14 climbers of Troop 373 out of Wheaton, Illinois we had set an ambitious agenda:

• Friday night campout for the trained personnel.
• Early Saturday wake-up and climb for leaders to set up multiple anchor systems high on the cliffs.
• A set of climbs ranged in difficulty from easy to expert are roped up.
• The Troops arrive for safety and procedural orientation as well as knot-tying instruction at the trailhead.

As the Scouts completed their heart-racing ascents, they too experienced first-hand the connections between cardiovascular health, testing limits and climbing. What a natural fit for CorDynamics and this series of adventures we are proud to support.

Climb Something.

Regards,

Peter Senese, CorDynamics Chief Operating Officer

American Heart Association Take-Away: Still Seeking Truth About AFib

As we’ve discussed in a previous blog, Investigating the Truth About AFib, the path toward targeted efficacy is fraught with hurdles. The reports coming out of the American Heart Association’s Annual Meeting are confirming just that.

Clearly, AFib, AF, Atrial Fibrillation, while being the most common cardiac arrhythmia affecting millions of individuals, is still not commonly understood from a drug development standpoint. Dronedarone, one of the big AHA headliners, is a drug we have used in preclinical investigations as well. In fact, our abstract that was presented at the 2012 Safety Pharmacology Society meeting in Innsbruck featured the use of chronically instrumented dogs to demonstrate the doses of both flecainide and dronedarone that result in changes with atrial, but not ventricular, refractoriness.

Through these types of studies, we are finding one of the long-standing AF roadblocks has been the selectivity of compounds on atrial vs. ventricular electrophysiology. Usually, the goal is to specifically alter the electrical properties of the heart’s upper chambers (atria) while leaving the lower chambers (ventricles) alone. Not nearly enough new chemical entities have this property—thus, the limited good treatment options in this area.

I find much of drug development news features on the negative headlines of drugs that “fail.” As researchers, we learn important discoveries from each study. This ultimately leads us to more effective compounds and gives physicians, a better indication of which medications to prescribe to which patients on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes knowing what doesn’t work, is just as important as knowing what does.

Regards,

Dr. Michael Gralinski, CorDynamics CEO