Stroke recovery research funded by the Heart Foundation
Congratulations to Associate Professor Connie Wong who has been awarded the Heart Foundation Vanguard grant of $150,000.
“We are very grateful for the funding of this exciting project. This is a fundamental proof-of-concept project prior to testing our novel therapeutic strategy in other stroke models, and with larger animals and even non-human primates, before progressing to potential clinical trials,” said A/Prof Wong.
The current therapeutic strategy for patients with stroke, or people at high risk of cardiovascular diseases, relies heavily on inhibiting the activation of platelets to prevent future coagulation events. However, this approach is coupled with the potential side effects of bleeding complications which have been suggested to contribute to poor patient compliance. This project will test an innovative concept where platelet-microglial interplay after stroke can be specifically targeted with pH-responsive nanoparticles that are designed to direct their delivery into the highly acidic inflammatory ischaemic brain tissue.
The project sets out to prove that the stimulus-responsive nature of this nanomedicine therapeutic strategy, in this case, stroke-induced neuroinflammation, will be immensely powerful to facilitate specific drug delivery to avoid non-specific side effects.
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