An Update From: Manchester Stroke Research Group
- The Natalie Kate Moss Trust
- Apr 18, 2023
- 2 min read
Research continues at pace within the group, and we are delighted to update on recent progress in our efforts to find out more about brain haemorrhage, develop new treatments and improve care pathways.
Recent Success
The fantastic news is that research students Sarah Withers and Faye Bolan, whose projects are on brain haemorrhage, were both recently awarded their PhD.
Congratulations to collaborator and Manchester alumni Dr Zahraa Al-Ahmady, now at Nottingham Trent University. Zahraa was awarded a grant from Brain Research UK to develop a new treatment for intracerebral haemorrhage. The project is in collaboration with Professor Stuart Allan, Dr Adrian Parry-Jones and Dr Ben Dickie at University of Manchester. Further details can be found at: https://www.brainresearchuk.org.uk/research-project/blocking-blood-induced-brain-damage-after-intracerebral-haemorrhage
Related to this funding the team involved recently published a paper describing the development of a novel treatment approach that could allow a drug to be directed targeted to the brain.
Al-Ahmady ZS, Dickie BR, Aldred I, Jasim DA, Barrington J, Haley M, Lemarchand E, Coutts G, Kaur S, Bates J, Curran S, Goddard R, Walker M, Parry-Jones A, Kostarelos K, Allan SM. Selective brain entry of lipid nanoparticles in haemorrhagic stroke is linked to biphasic blood-brain barrier disruption. Theranostics 2022; 12(10):4477-4497.Available from https://www.thno.org/v12p4477.htm
Research Fellow Siobhan Crilly led a study screening for drugs in zebrafish models of intracerebral haemorrhage which was recently published. Excitingly this work identified existing drugs used to lower blood pressure that might also reduce damage in the brain after haemorrhage.
Siobhan Crilly, Adrian Parry-Jones, Xia Wang, Julian N. Selley, James Cook, Victor S. Tapia, Craig S. Anderson, Stuart M. Allan, Paul R. Kasher. Zebrafish drug screening identifies candidate therapies for neuroprotection after spontaneous intracerebral haemorrhage. Disease Models and Mechanisms 2022; 15 (3): dmm049227. Available from https://doi.org/10.1242/dmm.049227
Our lead clinician Adrian Parry-Jones has had several notable recent successes, as detailed below:Northern scale up of his improvement ABC-ICH project, which is being extended to 25 hospitals in 7 regions, witharound 2000-3000 patients to be admitted during the project. A grant from the Stroke Association has been awarded to evaluate this project, funding Lisa Brunton (postdoc qualitative researcher) and Emma McManus (Research Fellow, Health Economics).
ABRIMS project – £500,000 from EPSRC, prototype microwave/radiofrequency imaging device developed and planning an evaluation at Salford to begin in late 2022.
MARS project – £100,000 from NIHR in collaboration with local SME (MDSAS) to develop an app to monitor motor recovery from intracerebral haemorrhage, in collaboration with Ulrike Hammerbeck.
New Students
Great news in that our research team has several new PhD students who joined in Autumn 2021:
Emily McMahon – screening for drugs that target inflammation in cellular and animal models of intracerebral haemorrhage.
Ran Zhou (Stella) – investigating the relationship between cholesterol metabolism and inflammation in intracerebral haemorrhage.
Mary Newland – investigating inflammatory changes in the brain after intracerebral haemorrhage to develop new treatments.
Olivia Murray – using machine learning to develop methods to identify involvement in the corticospinal tract in intracerebral haemorrhage and test implications for treatment and recovery.
