Bucindolol

Bucindolol is one of the drugs known as beta blockers, originally intended to be marketed to treat hypertension and heart failure. In 2001, the drug failed to reduce risk of death from any cause in a 2,708-patient study sponsored by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and was never brought to market.

From [1]: "Researchers said Monday that heart-failure patients with a favorable genetic variation who were given the drug bucindolol were 38% less likely to die from any cause than those given a placebo, when followed for an average of two years. Those given bucindolol were also 48% less likely to die of heart-related causes and 44% less likely to be hospitalized for heart failure.

Those patients amounted to 47% of the 1,040 who were analyzed for the study. Another 40% with a different genetic variant saw a marginal benefit from the drug, while 10% didn't get any help from it and may have been harmed."

Note: this information was presented at a conference, and has not been published. For further information, see rs1801253, which represents the primary SNP tested. The key conclusion (based on the patents files, such as USPTO application 20060177838 and others, is that "being homozygous in the .beta..sub.1AR gene to encode an arginine at position 389 {ie rs1801253} in the gene product provides the patient with a physiology that is amenable to treatment with bucindolol", and that, "a deletion in the .alpha..sub.2cAR gene that leads to a deletion of amino acids 322-325 in the gene product is detrimental to treatment of later stages of heart failure with bucindolol."