OUWB professor secures competitive $3M NIH renewal for multi-university stroke research project
An OUWB professor has been awarded a $3 million, five-year competitive grant to continue research on what could be a groundbreaking therapeutic approach to treating stroke.
Vardan Karamyan, Pharm.D., professor, Department of Foundational Medical Studies and the OUWB Laboratory for Neurodegenerative Disease and Drug Discovery, is principal investigator on the project that also includes researchers from Texas Tech University, University of Nebraska, and Michigan State University.
The $3 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant was awarded Sept. 1. It was a competitive renewal of a previous grant.
Currently in the preclinical research stage, the hope is to develop a new drug that could be administered to patients following ischemic stroke — the top cause of adult disability, according to the American Brain Foundation.
“If proven in future clinical trials, it would essentially be the second drug available to treat stroke in the United States,” says Karamyan. “This would be very impactful.”
“But the research is also high risk with a lot of unknowns,” he adds.
(Only partial stories are posted here with hopes to provide a brief overview and introduction to my most recent work. The full version of this story may be found on the OUWB InMedicine site here.)
