GENIUS II

Each year, over ten thousand people in The Netherlands suffer from myocardial infarction or stroke. The search for new methods to treat the cause of these events, atherosclerosis, is one of the top priorities of the DCVA.

Thirty possible targets for therapy

The recently concluded study titled: Generating the best evidence-based pharmaceutical targets and drugs for atherosclerosis or GENIUS has identified more than 30 targets for the treatment of atherosclerosis and tested if they could be used for drug development. These targets are proteins that play a role in cholesterol housekeeping and inflammation, two important factors that underlie atherosclerosis.

Towards medicine and biomarkers

GENIUS II has picked the most promising targets identified in GENIUS, and will test the efficacy of these targets. Also, five experimental drugs that showed great potential in pre-clinical studies will be tested in clinical trials. In parallel, state of the art techniques will be used to identify new sex-specific biomarkers in male and female cells that could lead to early recognition of atherosclerosis.