IGT Pharma discovery towards stroke treatment
IGT Pharma Inc IGT
Shares issued 8,819,820 Aug 25 close $0.64
Fri 27 Aug 99 News Release
Mr. Bruce Schmidt reports
Stroke is the third leading cause of death and the number one cause of
disability in North America. Occurring at a rate of about one per minute,
over 550,000 people annually suffer strokes and 150,000 of those will die.
More than two-thirds of all victims of strokes are 65 years of age or
older. Stroke results in health care costs of more than $30-billion each
year.
Strokes and heart attacks can result in the brain being deprived of oxygen.
This leads to a series of events resulting in the eventual death of brain
cells that may control a broad range of physiological functions such as
movement, speech and memory. The objective of drug researchers is to
discover therapies that will act as neuroprotectants that, if administered
shortly after the stroke has taken place, will minimize or prevent the
destruction of brain cells.
A team of chemists led by Dr. Ken Curry, IGT's vice-president of research
and development, has recently discovered a new molecule that, at low
concentrations, shows the ability to protect brain cells from oxygen
deprivation. In biological testing conducted at the University of British
Columbia, the drug, IGT440103, was able to completely protect rodent brain
cells from damage related to oxygen deprivation.
With this initial finding, IGT has now embarked on more definitive animal
studies to show the performance of IGT440103 in actual stroke conditions.
The preliminary results of these animal studies will be known in four to
six weeks after which further clinical development decisions will be made.
As there are few existing treatments for stroke, none of which is ideal,
IGT's discovery may provide a quantum step towards dealing with one of the
world's most obvious, long-term and debilitating medical conditions. |
