Your neurologist should be looking at this for stroke hyperacute therapies. So ask when they are going to start clinical trials. If you don't demand this its not going to get done. You can nasally deliver hypothermia and other possibilities so why not this one.
http://medcitynews.com/2013/02/neuroscientists-spinout-develops-a-nasal-spray-to-reduce-brain-swelling-after-concussion/
As a number of former athletes come forward with stories of long-term brain damage resulting from blows to the head, the stigma around concussions is changing.
And that’s opening the door for better diagnostics and treatments for
traumatic brain injuries, says neuroscientist Jake VanLandingham.
VanLandingham
is an assistant professor at the Florida State University Department of
Biomedical Sciences and director of research for the Memory Disorder
Clinic at Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare.
He and a team of collaborators are doing preclinical work on a drug to
reduce inflammation in the brain after a traumatic brain injury.
His drug development story starts nearly two decades ago, when as an undergraduate at Florida State University he experienced a fluke head injury that left him with three blood clots in his brain. He was already studying neurology and physical therapy, but after the injury, his studies took on a whole new meaning.
Fast-forward to
June 2012, when VanLandingham and his team licensed their work from
Florida State University and started a company called Prevacus. The
company’s drug, Prevasol, is a neurosteroid that in animal models has
reduced edema, inflammation and oxidative stress after brain trauma.
VanLandingham said it works through a receptor that’s in both the
neurons of the brain and also at the blood-brain barrier.
“It
upregulates three different proteins — one that’s critical in removing
blood from the brain, another that’s reducing inflammatory-mediated cell
death in the brain, and a third is important in stabilizing the
function of mitochondria inside the brain,” he said.
They’ve
created a formulation of the drug that would allow it to be given
nasally for as many as 30 days to people who sustain concussions.
The
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1.7 million
Americans experience a traumatic brain injury each year. But those are
just the ones who are treated. One of the challenges with treating
concussions is that they’re not always detected initially and often go
untreated, either because people don’t know they have them or don’t want to seek help. But that’s changing, according to VanLandingham.
“We’re seeing a really big shift, at least here in the U.S., where there’s better diagnostics
now, and that’s helpful for our cause,” he said. “But there’s also so
much more awareness about the long-term poor outcomes of concussion.”
Another
problem is that current treatments are limited, especially after the
so-called “golden hour.” For many, rest, surgery or rehabilitation are
the recommended interventions. But public attention from sports and military communities has created interest around new diagnostics and therapies.
Clinicaltrial.gov
lists more than 200 open trials focused on traumatic brain injury. Many
of them are observational studies, but interventions like progesterone, erythropoietin and cranial nerve noninvasive neuromodulation delivered by a device that’s placed on the tongue are being studied.
“It’s
a market that needed to be tapped into, and everything just came
together at the right time for us,” VanLandingham said of Prevacus.
Thus
far, the company has had no trouble finding support. It’s done all of
its fundraising locally in the Tallahassee area and has recruited an
executive team comprising a chief scientific officer with more than
three decades of experience in drug development and a CEO who’s also
head of the Florida Institute for the Commercialization of Public Research.
The startup is headquartered at Innovation Park of Tallahassee, with an in-house lab at Sid Martin Biotechnology Incubator at the University of Florida.
VanLandingham said he hopes to have the drug in the clinic by 2014.
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