Doctors from the University of Pennsylvania this week published an overview of current therapies available for the treatment of HCM. While this article mentions all of the old standards – beta blockers, calcium channel blockers, myectomy and alcohol ablation, the real focus is on the future of HCM treatment. In particular, the article describes several new and/or experimental therapies which look promising for the future.
These include:
Myosin inhibitors:
likemavacamten and aficamten. Two more myosin inhibitors with similar properties are currently under investigation.
Novel methods of septal reduction have been used experimentally with promising results. These include:
Percutaneous septal radiofrequency ablation which uses the same radiofrequency ablation techniques previously used to treat arrhythmias to treat outflow tract obstruction.
Transcatheter myotomy which has shown promising early results in pigs and so far on one person. In this procedure, catheters and guidewires are inserted into the basal septum and electrosurgery is used to cut the heart muscle.
Gene Therapy:
Cardiac gene therapy utilizes adeno-associated viruses (AAV) to introduce the therapy. This therapy is in early stages, but could be a future option for a subset of patients with genetic HCM.
More Research Needed for Patients with Non-Obstructive HCM:
A phase 2 trial called IMPROVE-HCM by a company called Imbria Pharmaceuticals is looking at the drug IMB-101 in patients with nonobstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy while Maverick-HCM showed that mavacamten was safe in non-obstructive HCM and improved cardiac biomarkers. However, mavacamten has not yet been tested in a Phase 3 trial for patients with non-obstructive HCM. A cohort of the REDWOOD-HCM phase 2 trial for Cytokinetics’ drug aficamten in non-obstructive patients is currently in progress.
HCM Beat 
Very promising and hopeful for patients like me with nonobstructive HCM.
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