The British Heart Foundation (BHF) has highlighted its hope that a recent grant awarded to Associate Professor Paolo Tammaro will lead to a more positive outcome for stroke survivors.
Paolo's work over the next three years, funded by an award of £250,000 from the BHF, will focus on the 'no-reflow' phenomenon whereby blood vessels blocked by clots during a stroke do not re-establish blood flow once the clot is removed. This can have a detrimental affect on a patient's recovery as tissues continue to suffer from a lack of oxygen and the brain suffers further damage.
The Tammaro group's hypothesis is that small cells called pericytes, found around capillaries, can cause this no-reflow. The group will study a protein that causes the pericytes to bond together and will target it with drugs using a rat model of stroke. If successful, the project could help identify new therapeutic targets.
Further details can be found here: https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-archive/2019/june/new-research-in-oxford-could-lead-to-improvements-in-recovery-of-stroke-survivors