PhotoHeart is one of the projects selected in this year's CaixaResearch call, and will be funded with one million euros to develop a photopharmacological therapy to help reduce cardiac injury after suffering a myocardial infarction. The project, led by Dr. Amadeu Llebaria, from the Institute for Advanced Chemistry of Catalonia (IQAC-CSIC), involves the Vall d'Hebron Research Institute (VHIR), the CIBER of Cardiovascular Diseases (CIBERCV), as well as The Hopkins University (USA).Myocardial infarction occurs after the occlusion of a coronary artery that blocks blood circulation and prevents oxygen from reaching the heart cells, which eventually die. The most effective treatment is the restoration of blood flow to deliver oxygen to the damaged area in a process called reperfusion. Advances in reperfusion therapy have greatly improved the survival of people who suffer an acute myocardial infarction. However, many patients still have significant heart involvement and end up suffering important sequelae that limit their quality of life and life expectancy and may lead to death."It is necessary to identify new cardioprotective strategies to reduce the size of the injury caused by the infarction", explains Dr. Amadeu Llebaria, from IQAC-CSIC."For this reason, our project will investigate a photopharmacological therapy to administer, in a localised manner, the optimal dose of a new type of light-regulated cardioprotective drug, which can be activated by illuminating specific areas of the heart during the first minutes of angioplasty, the primary treatment that dilates the obstructed blood vessel. This system can avoid prolonged treatments, thus minimising side effects", concludes the researcher.Since its foundation in 1993, the Cardiovascular Diseases group at VHIR has pioneered experimental studies that have shown that cardiomyocyte death could be reduced with pharmacological treatments applied at the time of reperfusion. However, these treatments had not been tested in the clinical setting, in part because of the difficulty of delivering them locally to the heart during an appropriate time window. But now, Photoheart will make it possible to control the onset and termination of drug activity precisely, avoiding toxicity issues and helping to restore calcium and cardiomyocyte contractility, reducing infarct size and improving the patient's long-term prognosis."This project, which combines the synthesis of new molecules with light-regulated activity and the design of new fibre-optic devices, may open the door to a new type of completely innovative therapies, not only in the treatment of acute myocardial infarction, but also in other pathologies that require precise control of the activity of a drug", according to Dr. Javier Inserte, principal investigator of the Cardiovascular Diseases group at VHIR.PhotoHeart has been one of the 30 projects selected in the "la Caixa" Foundation's CaixaResearch Health Call 2021. These are biomedical and health research projects of excellence from research centres and universities in Spain and Portugal, which have been endowed with a total of 22.1 million euros to be developed over the next three years.