New mindset in the search for stroke therapies
The study published in Nature Communications finds that mice deficient in tau, a protein within brain cells (neurons), are significantly protected from excitotoxic brain damage after experimental stroke. Stroke is a major cause of death and disability, and there is only a short window for therapeutic intervention, aimed at restoring blood flow to the brain before neurons are irreversibly damaged. Professor Lars Ittner and Dr Yazi Ke at UNSW and NeuRA had already established that in Alzheimer's disease, memory deficits and early deaths were tau-dependent. The researchers suspected a reduction of tau would also reduce acute brain damage in stroke. "Tau as a drug target is intensively explored in Alzheimer's disease, but as a drug target in stroke is completely new thinking," Professor Ittner says. "That's where our paper has implications beyond mouse model molecular work. Drug development in this space should consider stroke as a disease that you...