New injectable therapy could help limit brain damage in stroke patients
Researchers have developed a new injectable therapy that could help protect a patient’s brain after they experience a stroke. The team behind this new treatment shared a look at its early progress in Neurotherapeutics.[1]
The therapy in question was built to cross the blood-brain barrier and help repair brain tissue, limiting the risk of permanent brain damage and encouraging a healthy recovery following an ischemic stroke. Co-author Samuel Stupp, PhD, founding director of Northwestern University’s Center for Regenerative Nanomedicine, previously found that supramolecular therapeutic peptides (STPs) technology could reverse paralysis and repair tissue in mice after a single injection. This analysis took those observations related to the potential benefits of STPs and transferred them to a new area of medicine.
“Current clinical approaches are entirely focused on blood flow restoration,” co-author Ayush Batra, MD, an associate professor with the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and co-director of the NeuroVascular Inflammation Laboratory at Northwestern, said in a statement. “Any treatment that facilitates neuronal recovery and minimizes injury would be very powerful, but that holy grail doesn’t yet exist. This study is promising because it’s leading us down a pathway to develop these technologies and therapeutics for this unmet need.”
The group tested their therapy on mice, following them for seven days after receiving the injection. Advanced imaging confirmed that the therapy remained localized to the stroke injury site. Overall, mice treated with the therapy had significantly less brain tissue damage than untreated mice in addition to fewer signs of inflammation. No significant side effects were reported.
“One of the most promising aspects of this study is that we were able to show this therapeutic technology, which has shown incredible promise in spinal cord injury, can now begin to be applied in a stroke model and that it can be delivered systemically,” Stupp said in the same statement.
The researchers plan on conducting much more research on this therapy. Click here to read their full analysis.
Michael has more than 19 years of experience as a professional writer and editor. He has written at length about cardiology, radiology, artificial intelligence and other key healthcare topics.