Researchers at the University of Virginia have made a promising discovery that could lead to new treatments for heart failure—using a drug originally designed to fight cancer.
The UVA Health team, led by biomedical engineering professor Jeffrey J. Saucerman and graduate student Taylor G. Eggertsen, developed a computer model that suggests the chemotherapy drug midostaurin may help prevent or treat heart failure.
Heart failure is a serious, long-term condition that affects millions of people. It happens when the heart becomes too weak to pump blood properly, leading to fatigue, swelling in the legs, and eventually life-threatening complications. Most people diagnosed with heart failure face a high risk of dying within five years, which makes finding new treatments extremely urgent.
To speed up the process of discovering helpful drugs, the UVA team built a detailed computer simulation that mimics what happens inside heart muscle cells during a condition called cardiac hypertrophy.
This is when the heart muscle thickens in a harmful way, often as a step toward full-blown heart failure. The computer model allowed the researchers to test hundreds of drugs quickly and cheaply, without needing to run early experiments on animals or people.
The team screened more than 250 existing drugs and found 38 that showed potential to slow or reverse the damaging growth of heart cells. One of the most promising was midostaurin, a drug already approved to treat a type of blood cancer known as acute myeloid leukemia. In lab tests, midostaurin appeared to slow down the changes in heart muscle cells that lead to heart failure.
This approach—reusing existing drugs for new purposes—is a smart way to save time and money in drug development. As Professor Saucerman explains, “New drugs take decades to develop. We hope this tool will help us find drugs for heart failure that are already known to be safe and effective for other diseases.”
Because midostaurin has already passed safety tests for cancer patients, it might move through clinical trials for heart failure much faster than a brand-new medication would.
The next step for the UVA team is to test these promising drugs in models that more closely resemble human heart tissue, and eventually in human trials. If the results hold up, this could lead to more treatment options for people suffering from heart failure.
This research opens the door to a faster, smarter way of finding life-saving treatments. With millions at risk and few existing options, the idea that a cancer drug like midostaurin could help protect the heart is both surprising and hopeful.
The findings were published in the British Journal of Pharmacology.
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