Prof Wise sought support for an injectable treatment for peripheral artery disease. Peripheral artery disease has a significant impact on the health of humans, affecting over 2.3 million Australians and 200 million people globally.
There is currently no lasting effective treatment, and thousands of cases result in amputations each year. This intervention has the potential to provide an urgently needed improved treatment option. NFMRI funding provided support for the research plan incorporating a rat model and rabbit model study to demonstrate safety and efficacy in two established animal models of vessel injury and healing – key criteria for attracting future investment. These two models would complete the optimisation and proof-of-concept stages for the technology (rat model), before going head-to-head with current clinical practice in arteries of increasing anatomical similarity to humans (rabbit). Together these studies provided the necessary data package to enable investors to confidently drive the technology to the next stage of development and toward clinical translation.
