…is recognized. Alan Boyle has an interview. I found this interesting:

It turns out that nanomaterials can play a huge role in many areas of therapeutics. One example is HDL [high-density lipoprotein], the “good” kind of cholesterol. That’s a nanostructure. We have statins that allow you to lower the levels of LDL [low-density lipoprotein, which is “bad” cholesterol]. To be healthy, what you really like is a good HDL-to-LDL ratio, so you’d like to learn how to raise HDL levels.

We’ve learned how to build nanostructures based on gold particles that mimic the properties of natural HDL, and we think that will lead to a whole new class of therapeutics that will be the complement to statins. If you think about what that can do for cardiovascular disease, the impact could be enormous. And it’s not just cardiovascular disease. HDL is implicated in a lot of different diseases, as a positive thing to battle inflammation. Being able to raise effective HDL levels could be quite important. We’re now testing particles that mimic the properties, the size and structure of HDL, and the ability to bind cholesterol and transport it. So we’re really excited that this might lead to a whole new class of therapeutics designed to raise HDL levels and have an impact on cardiovascular disease as well as a wide range of diseases that involve inflammation.

I think that the down side of statins is significantly underplayed. They seem to cause muscle degeneration, and I suspect that they do this to everyone who takes them, to some degree, even if not everyone has overt symptoms. And hey, I learned in science class that the heart is a muscle. My cardiologist wants to put me on them, but I’m resisting (I have no symptoms of cardiac problems, other than high LDL, and high blood pressure, which I’ve had all my life along with a fast pulse). She prescribed Crestor, which I went to the Pfizer site to look up, and it said that while it reduced cholesterol, it didn’t reduce heart risk — for that, you had to go to Lipitor.

Anyway, I wonder if the artificial HDL being described here could allow you to improve the ratio by boosting the numerator, and ignoring the denominator, eliminating the need for statins? I guess only clinical trials will tell, if they get to that point. Anyway, I hope that Obamacare won’t end up cutting off funding for this kind of research.