University of Missouri (MU) School of Medicine researchers, Columbia, Mo, report that they have pinpointed and demonstrated the effectiveness of a new compound that may have treatment implications in stroke. The new compound, researchers say, is engineered to target a specific enzyme known to impact key brain functions and stop of the spread of brain bleeds while protecting brain cells from further damage in the hours following stroke. MU researchers reportedly joined with a team from the University of Notre Dame to investigate the compound; a thiirane class of gelatinase selective inhibitors and its impact on the matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) enzyme; specifically MMP-9.

According to an MU news release, researchers used a model of induced stroke in mice. The results indicate that the treatment exhibited success in stopping further bleeding in the brain following stroke. “While we are still in the research phase for this type of compound, we believe it could be combined tPA in the future to buy ischemic stroke patients a longer window of time to receive emergency treatment,” says Zezong Gu, MD, PhD, corresponding author, assistant professor of pathology and anatomical sciences at the MU School of Medicine. Gu adds that the new compound may also have treatment implications in hemorrhagic stroke.

The release notes that the research paper appears in the Journal of Neuroscience. Jiankun Ciu, MD, lead author, assistant professor of pathology and anatomical sciences at the MU School of Medicine, rearticulates the study’s findings, noting that, “To be able to study the effectiveness of this potential new treatment under these conditions provides us with a highly unique set of data showing this compound can disrupt key harmful pathological events that occur after stroke.”

Source: University of Missouri School of Medicine