Cases of potentially deadly brain damage as a result of stroke could be reduced after new research identified a pathway in the brain that causes swelling, and which responds to an innovative treatment.
Research led by the University of Exeter, and published in Nature Communications, has discovered how a malfunction in the way key proteins are transported within the brain after a stroke can lead to swelling, which can cause severe damage.
The international team has developed a compound which effectively treats this pathway in laboratory tests, paving the way for a new treatment. This could potentially provide an alternative, more effective way to treat brain swelling, for which currently there are limited treatment options.
The work was developed by a consortium of experts in Signalling Transduction (Dr Jinwei Zhang, University of Exeter, UK), Medicinal Chemistry (Professor Xianming Deng, Xiamen University, China), Neurosurgery and Cellular and Molecular Physiology (Dr Kristopher T. Kahle, Yale School of Medicine, USA) and Neurology (Professor Dandan Sun, Veterans Affairs Pittsburgh Healthcare System and University of Pittsburgh, USA).
Read more at University Of Exeter