Team of Chicago hospitals awarded grant to accelerate stroke research, treatments

A new network dedicated to advancing research and therapies for stroke is forming in Chicago thanks to $2 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The Chicago Stroke Trials Consortium is a partnership among Northwestern Medicine®, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County, Loyola University Medical Center, Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, Rush University Medical Center, and University of Chicago Medicine that will build an infrastructure to support clinical trials for stroke prevention, treatment and recovery. Northwestern University will be the regional coordinating center for the consortium and administer the project over the next five years.

"The Chicago Stroke Trials Consortium brings together the city's leading stroke experts and top medical centers in an integrated approach to improving treatment of stroke and reducing death and disability from the disease," said Shyam Prabhakaran, MD, MS, the principal investigator for the consortium, who is a neurologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and associate professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "The primary goal of the network is to rapidly develop, promote and execute high quality, multi-centered clinical trials that will study interventions for prevention, treatment and recovery from stroke in both adult and pediatric patient populations."

The consortium is funded through the NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), which supports clinical research nationwide through a series of regional stroke networks. With an emphasis on patient recruitment and retention, the network will facilitate novel approaches to stroke care and accelerate the development of promising therapies.

Every 40 seconds, someone in the United States has a stroke. Stroke is the fourth leading cause of death and number one cause of adult disability leaving more than two thirds of survivors with lasting impairment. While the risk of having a stroke increases over the age of 55, a stroke can occur at any age.

Building on existing alliances and collaboration among top hospitals in Chicago, the consortium is made up researchers and physicians from a variety of disciplines including neurology, neurological surgery, neuroradiology, vascular surgery, emergency medicine, rehabilitation medicine and pediatric neurology. Each participating medical center will have a primary investigator who will lead its consortium research efforts. Co-investigators for the study include: Richard Bernstein, MD (Northwestern Memorial); Mark S. Wainwright, MD, PhD (Lurie Children's); Jose Biller, MD, and Sarkis Morales Vidal, MD (Loyola); Elliot Roth, MD (Rehabilitation Institute); James J. Conners, MD, MS (Rush); Michael Kelly, MD (Stroger); and James Brorson, MD (University of Chicago).