Treating Dysfunction of Resistance Arteries to Restore Blood Flow with Dr. Steffen-Sebastian Bolz QanatPharma

Dr. Steffen-Sebastian Bolz, Founder of QanatPharma, emphasizes the critical role of resistance arteries, microscopic blood vessels that regulate blood flow and pressure throughout the body, in maintaining organ function. Due to their size, these resistance arteries have been overlooked but with new lab techniques, QP is discovering how their dysfunction contributes to heart failure, cognitive impairment and strokes. The company's lead candidate is a repurposed drug already approved for cystic fibrosis that shows promise in restoring brain blood flow and cognitive funtion in heart failure patients. Steffen-Sebastian explains, "So what we would consider resistance arteries is anything between the capillary level, which would be 10 micrometers, up to, let's say, a few hundred micrometers. And 300 micrometers is the thickness of a blonde hair. That's kind of what we're talking about here. And everything else, and what I talk about in function is what I said before: they can change their diameter. They can open up or close, which large arteries can not do. They are stiff as a garden hose. They are conduits with arteries. They are made to conduct blood at the lowest resistance possible, whereas the small resistance arteries are made to change resistance and regulate flow and pressure." "As I said, these small resistance arteries and capillaries are everywhere. Every organ has them. And if you compromise the function of those resistance arteries, you compromise blood flow to the capillaries, which actually means that the capillaries don't get enough oxygen. They cannot transport CO2 away from the tissues. They don't get enough nutrients and so on, which then leads to functional damage, which is number one." "And if it persists, if the problem persists, it can also lead to structural damage, which we can actually see. You mentioned the heart. The heart can deal with it, and also the brain can deal with reductions in that flow to a certain extent. But if the reduction in blood flow exceeds a certain limit, you get structural damage. And we see that structural damage. And we call them infarctions in the heart, but also in the brain, which is a stroke." #QanatPharma #VascularBiology #MicrovascularHealth #DrugDiscovery #HeartFailure #CognitiveImpairment #BiotechInnovation #PrecisionMedicine #AIinDrugDiscovery#Microvascular #Neurology #DrugRepurposing #Cardiology #MedicalResearch #ClinicalTrials #Hypertension qanatpharma.com Download the transcript here