TORONTO A Canadian effort to develop a drug to limit the brain damage caused by strokes has made an important step forward.
Scientists involved in the project reported Sunday that in a trial conducted on patients undergoing repair of brain aneurysms, the drug, called NA-1, reduced the number of postprocedure strokes by about half.
This is rare good news in the quest to develop a neuroprotective drug, a field where more than 1,000 compounds have been tested, and all failed.
The researchers have founded a biotechnology company NoNO Inc. to finance the work, because the pharmaceutical industry has essentially left the field. NoNO means no nitric oxide, the free radical produced during a stroke that damages brain tissues.
The issue with Pharma is that stroke has been such a wasteland for them that no ones willing to invest, said Dr. Michael Hill, a stroke neurologist with the University of Calgarys Hotchkiss Brain Institute and the Calgary Stroke Program at Foothills Hospital.
Hill is first author on the scientific paper outlining the findings, published in the journal Lancet Neurology.
The paper reports the results of a Phase II trial, which is the first level in the hierarchy of clinical trials where studies are designed to look for proof a drug or an intervention actually works.
But Phase II trials are small; this one included only 185 subjects. In order to persuade Health Canada or the drug regulators of other countries that this drug should be brought to market, a larger, Phase III trial will have to be successfully conducted.
Thats already in the planning stages, said Dr. Michael Tymianski, who in addition to being a neurosurgeon at Toronto Western Hospital, is president of NoNO Inc. Tymianski was the senior author on this study.
Still, the researchers are declaring their results proof of the principle that the brain can be protected from the cascade of damage a stroke touches off. And a commentary the journal published in conjunction with the study essentially concurred.
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Stroke drug looks promising in human trial, docs say