CID seminar: Novel Stroke Treatments: Cells and a Vitamin, 17 April

April 17, 12-1pm, Seminar Room 1, TRF

Presented by Professor Chris Sobey

NHMRC Senior Research Fellow and Professor in Physiology

Co-Head, Vascular Biology & Immunopharmacology Group, La Trobe University

Stroke accounts for more than 10% of deaths worldwide, and over a third of survivors are left with major neurological impairment. The need for new and effective therapies for stroke is therefore clear and urgent. While some advances have been made toward understanding its mechanisms, still only one intervention has been found to reduce brain injury following clinical stroke – the ‘clot-buster’ recombinant tissue plasminogen activator. Unfortunately however, with a short time window of only 4.5 h, this therapy is available to less than 10% of stroke patients. For further advances in the clinical treatment of ischemic stroke, the complex mechanisms of cellular injury following cerebral ischemia must be elucidated to provide novel targets for future therapies. This presentation will describe some of our recent work examining novel therapies such as human amnion epithelial cells and vitamin D in experimental stroke models.

Chris Sobey is an NHMRC Senior Research Fellow and Professor in Physiology who moved from the Monash Pharmacology Department to the School of Life Sciences at La Trobe University in 2017. There, together with Prof Grant Drummond, the new HOD of Physiology Anatomy & Microbiology, Chris co-leads the Vascular Biology & Immunopharmacology Group comprising 20 members. Chris has more than 190 publications and an H index of 56 from his studies of vascular diseases involving oxidative stress and inflammation – especially stroke, atherosclerosis and hypertension. His current work is investigating the inflammatory mechanisms occurring in the brain after stroke in order to identify and develop new treatments for stroke patients. Novel approaches include systemic cell therapy, Th2 cytokines, estrogen receptor binding drugs and vitamin D.