Health Rounds: Experimental drug shows promise for stroke patients who miss the current medical treatment window
Stroke patients who can’t get to the hospital quickly enough to be eligible for the usual clot-busting treatments may soon have another option, results from a mid-stage trial suggest.
Currently available thrombolytic drugs must be given within a few hours after symptoms begin. That narrow window can rule out patients who did not, or could not, seek help promptly because they didn’t immediately recognize their symptoms, as well as those who wake up with symptoms of a stroke that may have started hours earlier.
The experimental drug being developed by Silver Creek Pharmaceuticals and dubbed scp۷۷۶ inhibits apoptosis, a process in which injured cells self-destruct.
The drug keeps injured cells alive by delivering a hormone called insulin-like growth factor ۱, or IGF-۱, which activates the cells’ natural repair pathways.
In ۱۱۹ patients who came to emergency departments on average about ۱۲ hours after stroke onset – for whom there was no approved drug treatment – scp۷۷۶ resulted in clinically meaningful improvements in outcomes compared to a placebo, researchers reported at the ۲۰۲۵ World Stroke Congress in Barcelona.
