© Xavier Laffray / CRRET The extracellular matrix (marked in green) surrounds brain cells (cores marked in blue).
At left, normal animals. Middle, in untreated animals after a stroke, the matrix is dislocated and brain cells degenerate. At right, in animals treated following a stroke, the organization of the matrix is reestablished, and the cells are preserved.
Paris, 15 November 2018 To protect neurons and limit the damage after a stroke, researchers from the CNRS, the University of Caen-Normandie, University Paris-Est Créteil, and the company OTR3 have pursued an innovative path: targeting the matrix that surrounds and supports brain cells. Their results, just published in the journal Theranostics , have confirmed this strategy on rats, and will lead to a clinical study between now and late 2019. With over 300 cases per day in France, stroke is the leading cause of handicap among adults, and the second cause of death. 80 to 85% are caused by the occlusion of a cerebral artery by a blood clot (ischemic stroke), with nearby neurons dying because of oxygen deprivation. The only existing treatment involves eliminating the blood clot, which is only possible during the first few hours following a stroke, and consequently available only for a minority of patients. Moreover, brain lesions can persist and worsen long after the start of a stroke, with no treatment being currently available to slow them, or to improve functional recovery. Numerous avenues of research are studying how to protect neurons from this degeneration.
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