Development of novel treatment strategy for ischemic brain injury

Our aim is to develop much needed novel effective treatments for ischemic stroke and birth asphyxia.

Our results show that treatment with a peptide called C3a ameliorates cognitive impairment due to birth asphyxia and stimulates functional recovery after stroke.

As the treatment was effective even when started 7 days after stroke, the broad therapeutic window means that the majority of stroke survivors could benefit from such a therapy.

As the next step towards our goal to translate this treatment strategy to the clinic, we aim to test the effect of small synthetic C3a analogues on neurological outcome after experimental stroke and birth asphyxia, and to gain an in-depth mechanistic understanding of how C3a affects functional recovery after these brain injuries.

Further, we aim at developing optimized small molecular weight C3a analogues and test their efficacy in our injury models.

The project contributes to the understanding of the mechanisms controlling brain tissue responses to ischemia, assesses the feasibility of pharmacological targeting of the C3a receptor for promotion of functional recovery, and puts forward a novel treatment strategy to reduce neurological impairment and improve outcome after stroke, birth asphyxia and potentially other types of brain injury.