David Pinsky, M.D.
Stopping strokes in their tracks
|
Heart attacks and most strokes have a lot in common. Both are medical emergencies caused by tiny blood clots that break off from the lining of a blood vessel and become stuck inside smaller vessels, blocking the flow of blood in the area and leading to the death of heart muscle or brain tissue.
For decades, medical science has tried to determine how to minimize the damage caused by heart attacks and strokes by quickly restoring blood flow - without causing too much bleeding. But a perfect solution remains elusive.
David Pinsky and his laboratory team believe they’re on track to find a better strategy. With their Taubman Institute funding, they are zeroing in on particular proteins called ectoenzymes, which can stop the formation of a clot by interfering with the signals that blood platelets send out during the very early stages of clot formation.
“What this funding will do is allow creative people to just take wild hypotheses that are based on a lot of intuition,” says Pinsky. “It reduces the barrier to blue-sky, creative research. It allows us to follow a hundred hunches - which is something that other funding doesn’t allow you to do that often.”
In this case, the hunch is to use ectoenzymes to stop strokes or heart attacks in their tracks. “What we could conceivably do is take that enzyme, and make it, or a portion of it, to be given in an urgent setting to abort clot formation.”
