IMproving Preclinical Assessment of Cardioprotective Therapies (IMPACT) criteria: guidelines of the EU-CARDIOPROTECTION COST Action
Sandrine Lecour, Ioanna Andreadou, Hans Erik Bøtker, Sean M. Davidson, Gerd Heusch, Marisol Ruiz‐Meana, Rainer Schulz, Coert J. Zuurbier, Péter Ferdinandy, Derek J. Hausenloy, on behalf of the European Union-CARDIOPROTECTION COST ACTION CA16225, Pavle Adamovski, Ioanna Andreadou, Saime Batirel, Monika Barteková, Luc Bertrand, Christophe Beauloye, David Biedermann, Vilmantė Borutaitė, Hans Erik Bøtker, Stefan Chłopicki, Maija Dambrova, Sean M. Davidson, Yvan Devaux, Fabio Di Lisa, Dragan Djurić, David Erlinge, Inês Falcão‐Pires, Péter Ferdinandy, Eleftheria Galatou, Alfonso T. García‐Sosa, Henrique Girão, Zoltán Giricz, Mariann Gyöngyösi, Derek J. Hausenloy, Donagh Healy, Gerd Heusch, Vladimir Jakovljević, Jelena Jovanić, George Kararigas, Risto Kerkal, František Kolář, Brenda R. Kwak, Przemysław Leszek, Edgars Liepinsh, Jacob Lønborg, Sarah Longnus, Jasna Marinović, Danina Muntean, Lana Nežić, Michel Ovize, Pasquale Pagliaro, Clarissa P. C. Gomes, John Pernow, Andreas Persidis, Søren Erik Pischke, Bruno K. Podesser, Ines Potočnjak, Fabrice Prunier, Tanya Ravingerova, Marisol Ruiz-Meana, Alina Serban, Katrine Hordnes Slagsvold, Rainer Schulz, Niels van Royen, Belma Turan, Marko Vendelin, Stewart R. Walsh, Nace Zidar, Coert J. Zuurbier, Derek M. Yellon
Abstract
Acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and the heart failure (HF) which may follow are among the leading causes of death and disability worldwide. As such, new therapeutic interventions are still needed to protect the heart against acute ischemia/reperfusion injury to reduce myocardial infarct size and prevent the onset of HF in patients presenting with AMI. However, the clinical translation of cardioprotective interventions that have proven to be beneficial in preclinical animal studies, has been challenging. One likely major reason for this failure to translate cardioprotection into patient benefit is the lack of rigorous and systematic in vivo preclinical assessment of the efficacy of promising cardioprotective interventions prior to their clinical evaluation. To address this, we propose an in vivo set of step-by-step criteria for IMproving Preclinical Assessment of Cardioprotective Therapies ('IMPACT'), for investigators to consider adopting before embarking on clinical studies, the aim of which is to improve the likelihood of translating novel cardioprotective interventions into the clinical setting for patient benefit.