Research Study Produces a Major Breakthrough in Arteriosclerosis

August 4, 2025

By Robert Wiedemer

What’s the business/finance angle here? All of the participants in the research study were employees of a bank! A Spanish bank – Banco Santander. That caught my eye. Many years ago, the President of Banco Santander agreed to have his employees participate in a study on arteriosclerosis otherwise known as clogged arteries. It’s one of the biggest causes of death in the world.

What’s even more fascinating is that the research produced a major breakthrough. The study found that imidazole propionate, which is produced by certain bacteria in our gut, is the source of the plaque that causes clogged arteries. The plaque is an inflammatory autoimmune reaction to the imidazole propionate. Think of plaque as a bit like a scab which is a reaction to an infection.

Interestingly, it didn’t matter whether the people had high or low cholesterol, the key was the presence imidazole propionate. In fact, when rats were injected with imidazole propionate, they got clogged arteries – there was a direct causal relationship.

I should add that it wasn’t just the business/finance angle that encouraged me to write this story, it also might be important to some of my clients and readers.

This Breakthrough Seems Similar to what Barry Marshall Did in His Research on Curing Ulcers

This is a huge and astounding breakthrough. It seems to me a bit like the breakthrough that won Barry Marshall the Nobel prize for finding the cure for ulcers. Many people thought ulcers were caused by too much nervousness or even bad food. The only solution was surgery to remove the ulcers. Ugg. Barry found that the cause of ulcers was simply a bacteria – the bacteria Helicobacter pylori.

With that knowledge, he was able to figure out the ingredients needed for a pill to cure ulcers. Instead of painful and often unsuccessful surgery, ulcer sufferers could just take Tagamet pills. A real breakthrough that, by the way, got little academic support until it was proven.

This Breakthrough Did Not Come from a High Status University

Likewise, the group who conducted the arteriosclerosis research was not from a high status university, but instead the National Center for Cardiovascular Research in Madrid.

Part of the problem with breakthroughs at high status schools is that breakthroughs often require doing something very different that in some way challenges or threatens the conventional wisdom. That’s difficult at any school, but those schools that are receiving lots of support and praise currently have a lot to lose by taking a big risk in challenging that conventional wisdom.

That’s even more true for the individual researchers desperately in need of tenure or support from their peers. It’s just not worth the risk to their careers to do something too far outside of what is currently respected and supported. Hence, they often do very little game changing research, preferring to just look smart and get praise from their peers instead of being smart.

So, hats off to David Sancho, the leader of the study at the National Center for Cardiovascular Research in Madrid for being willing to be smart (instead of just looking smart) and do this research. And to Banco Santander for helping make it happen.

The Research Team Has Also Developed a Drug That Prevents Imidazole Propionate from Binding with its Receptor, Thus Stopping the Further Development of Clogged Arteries

The researchers also identified the receptor to which imidazole propionate binds and have managed to block it with a drug. They have found that the drug completely prevented the further development of arteriosclerosis and have patented the treatment.

Hopefully, a drug company will be smart enough to jump on this research and produce that drug as quickly as regulators allow. Helping cure clogged arteries will be a real money maker. And hopefully the team that did this, including David Sancho, Annalaura Mastrangelo and Inaki Robles, will get a well-deserved Nobel prize.

I may be overly optimistic on this breakthrough since it was only recently published in the well-respected journal, Nature, in July. I’m sure there are limitations to the drug and there may be other problems we will find out down the road. But this hits me as being on the right track for a real breakthrough.

That’s in part because of the recent success of looking at viruses or bacteria as a triggering element in creating bigger problems, such as ulcers, as I’ve already mentioned earlier regarding Barry Marshall. Another similar success recently is cervical cancer. Researchers found that the HPV virus causes cervical cancer and vaccinating against the HPV virus has basically crushed cervical cancer. That finding also resulted in another well-deserved Nobel for the research team.

At the very least, I think this research will help fight one of the leading causes of death in the world. The only drugs we have now to prevent clogged arteries are statins and those have not that effective because they are not directly attacking the cause of clogged arteries. So, anything that can directly attack the cause is a big plus.

If only all these medical researchers who have done so much to help so many just had a good Tik Tok video then they would really be famous! But at least my readers will know who they are.