Minimising the damage of stroke

Researchers have demonstrated that certain poly-arginine and arginine-rich peptides are highly neuroprotective in stroke models and can limit brain damage after a stroke.

There are currently no neuroprotective treatments available after a stroke. This, coupled with the National Stroke Foundation estimate that the number of people having a stroke in Australia will rise from 50,000 a year to more than 130,000 by 2050, makes these findings particularly exciting.

“While some of the brain injury occurs within minutes of a stroke occurring, which is obviously difficult to prevent, there is still the opportunity to minimise ongoing damaging processes which persist several hours and even days after a stroke,” said Adjunct Associate Professor Bruno Meloni Meloni, who, along with Clinical Professor Neville Knuckey, led the Western Australian Neuroscience Research Institute (WANRI) research team.

The researchers began studying the neuroprotective properties of poly-arginine peptides in 2012 and recently completed their first lab-based stroke study in animals, with one of the peptides (R9) reducing brain injury when administered 30 minutes after the onset of a stroke.

Similar positive results were obtained when treatment was given one hour after a stroke.

“Results for new therapeutic compounds like these don’t come along very often, so we’re feeling very hopeful that we may have discovered a potential treatment to improve a patient’s quality of life after a stroke,” Meloni said.

The commercial development of the peptides is currently being explored with help from the University of Western Australia.

The team hopes to secure additional funding this year to examine how these peptides perform within other conditions such as spinal cord injury and other forms of brain ischemia (eg, cardiac arrest, traumatic brain injury, perinatal hypoxic-ischemia).

The study has been published in the Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism.