April 25, 2017
Cardiol Therapeutics Appoints Dr. Guillermo Torre-Amione to Scientific Advisory Board
On April 25th, 2017, Cardiol Therapeutics Inc. (“Cardiol” or the “Company”), a nanotherapeutics company focused on the research and commercial development of proprietary drug formulations for the treatment of heart failure, appointed Dr. Guillermo Torre-Amione, MD PhD, to its Scientific Advisory Board.
Dr. Torre-Amione is board certified in Cardiovascular Disease and Advanced Heart Failure/Transplant Cardiology. He is chief of the heart failure division and medical director of cardiac transplantation at the Houston Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center, where he divides his time between an active clinical practice and heart failure research. Dr. Torre-Amione is also a senior member at The Methodist Hospital Research Institute, full professor of medicine at the Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University, New York, and, more recently, became President of TecSalud, an academic medical center and medical school of the Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM) in Mexico.
Dr. Torre-Amione spearheads the Gene and Judy Campbell Laboratory for Cardiac Transplant Research, where his primary areas of research include heart failure, cardiac transplant, and the role of the immune response in modulating the progression of heart failure. Dr. Torre-Amione initiated a series of clinical studies that led to an FDA-approved phase II clinical trial of neurostimulation in heart failure, a novel approach to the treatment of patients with advanced heart failure. Other significant clinical investigations include a study with cardiac transplant patients designed to impact the cardiac hypertrophy that naturally follows transplantation, a protocol for autologous stem cell transfer in patients with advanced refractory heart failure, and a novel study involving plasma exchange in advanced heart failure patients.
After receiving his medical degree from the ITESM in Monterrey, Mexico, Dr. Torre-Amione moved to Chicago, where he conducted graduate studies in immunology that led to a doctorate degree in immunology from the University of Chicago. He then relocated to Houston to complete his internship, residency, and cardiology fellowship at Baylor College of Medicine where he received his first academic appointment as a clinical instructor in 1995. Dr. Torre-Amione has published more than 120 manuscripts in peer-review journals and currently divides his time between his clinical and academic activities in Houston at The Methodist Hospital and in Monterrey, Mexico, at ITESM.
“We are excited to welcome Dr. Torre-Amione to our Scientific Advisory Board,” said David Elsley, President & CEO of Cardiol. “His breadth of experience in both scientific and clinical research in heart failure, including the design and execution of pivotal clinical trials in this area, will make an enormous contribution towards enabling us to fulfil Cardiol’s commitment to conquering heart failure.”
About Cardiol Therapeutics
Cardiol Therapeutics is a nanotherapeutics company focused on the research and commercial development of proprietary drug formulations for the treatment of heart failure. Heart failure is a chronic condition that affects more than 26 million people globally. Over five million adults in the U.S. suffer from heart failure, and it remains a leading cause of death and hospitalization with associated healthcare costs exceeding $30 billion annually. People with heart failure experience shortness of breath, fatigue, rapid heart rate, edema, reduced exercise capacity and a marked reduction in quality of life. Approximately half of all heart failure patients have heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), which is often associated with diabetes, obesity and high blood pressure and for which there have been no new therapies developed in over 20 years. Cardiol is developing CTX01, a proprietary nanoformulation of pharmaceutical cannabidiol for the treatment of HFpEF. Cannabidiol has been shown to attenuate cardiac dysfunction in experimental models of diabetic cardiomyopathy and to decrease oxidative stress, fibrosis, and inflammation in other models relevant to HFpEF. CTX01 is designed to optimize and maintain blood levels of cannabidiol and target the drug to areas of inflammation in the heart. Cardiol is also developing CTX02, a proprietary nanoformulation of methotrexate for the treatment of heart failure. Recent experimental data have shown that methotrexate improves cardiac function after acute myocardial infarction and has anti-fibrotic properties.
