When someone is affected by a stroke, the standard treatment to restore blood flow to the brain can both save their life and cause additional damage – damage which a new, injectable nanomaterial promises to protect against.
The regenerative material, called IKVAV-PA for short, was developed by researchers at Northwestern University in the US. It’s previously been shown to repair tissue in a mouse model of spinal cord injuries, and here it was tested on a mouse model of acute ischemic stroke, the most common type.
At the core of the treatment are supramolecular therapeutic peptides (STPs), nicknamed ‘dancing molecules’ because of how dynamically their biological parts can move. This makes them more adaptable and versatile when interacting with target cells.