Word: plasminogen
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After months of controversy, the Food and Drug Administration last week ended its ambivalent attitude toward a genetically engineered drug that dissolves blood clots. FDA Commissioner Frank Young announced that the agency had approved the use of tissue plasminogen activator, or t-PA, as an emergency treatment for heart attacks. The drug activates an enzyme that destroys fibrin, the protein that binds clots together. Arterial clotting is thought to be a factor in most of the 1.5 million heart attacks suffered annually in the U.S., so t-PA could save thousands of lives. With an injection of the drug, said...
...drug, called tissue plasminogen activator, dissolves blood clots that cause heart attacks, said Vice Provost Kathleen Mullinix...
...Samuel Z. Goldhaber '72, an assistant professor of medicine, a group of doctors at Brigham and Women's Hospital gave a drug called Tissue Plasminogen Activator (TPA) to 40 patients with blood clots in their lungs, and it quickly broke up the clots in 37 of them...
...substance, called tissue plasminogen activator (t-PA), is normally produced by the body in small amounts to prevent excessive clotting and to break down old clots that no longer serve any purpose. The Harvard researchers have used genetic engineering techniques to manufacture large quantities of t-PA, with the hope of bolstering the heart patient's anti-clotting mechanisms. According to Braunwald, "The aim is to use the body's own system to eliminate the clot before it can do too much damage to the heart...