Leslie Leinwand got plenty of skeptical looks from her coworkers in 2006 when she announced her newfound fascination with pythons. Leinwand, a molecular biologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, was interested in the roots of heart disease, and she noted that the snakes manage to consume vast quantities of fat, yet their hearts stay lean and strong. But snake biology is very different from human biology, and it wasn’t clear that any lessons from pythons would translate.
Six years on, her gamble has paid off. Python blood contains a trio of molecules that rapidly bulk up and strengthen heart muscle, suggesting a new approach for combating cardiovascular disease—especially congestive heart failure, a chronic condition affecting 5.7 million Americans in which the heart becomes too weak to pump blood effectively.
Ideally, everyone would have a big, muscular heart like that of an elite athlete, kept strong through constant exercise, Leinwand says. Instead, many people develop enlarged hearts for the wrong reasons: Factors such as obesity and high blood pressure introduce so much stress that the heart stretches out to compensate. It gets bigger but less efficient. That can lead to heart failure, along with an increased risk of fatty buildup and heart attacks.
