Two assistant professors at the Medical School may have discovered a substance that reduces tissue damage after heart attacks in humans.

Dr. Peter R. Maroko and Dr. Charles B. Carpenter, assistant professors of Medicine and researchers at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, found that Cobra Venom Factor (CVF) increases cell resistance that results in reduced death of coronary tissue when administered to dogs after heart attacks.

The discovery is the result of the first part of a two-year study funded by the hospital.

In the second part of the study, Maroko and Carpenter will test the safety of CVF and determine its effect on humans.

"If CVF is proved to have the same effect on humans that it has on dogs, then we will have made a big step forward in the treatment of heart disease," Maroko said yesterday.

Heart attacks are caused by the formation of an obstacle that reduces blood flow in a coronary artery. CVF increases the resistance of cells that would die because of the lessened blood flow, thereby decreasing tissue death.

"CVF would minimize the damage caused by a heart attack," Maroko said.