Moment's Notice

If you get a stroke – the equivalent of a heart attack but where blood supply to a part of the brain is cut by a clot or burst vessel – there’s three hours in which to restore blood flow before brain tissue dies. Clot-dissolving drugs or surgery can avert the worst effects of a stroke, but only if administered promptly. And since lost brain cells take a long time to grow back, rehabilitation can be painstaking. This snapshot of progenitor cells (stained green) turning into new astrocytes (orange) – the star-shaped and commonest cell type in the brain – offers hope that future therapies aiming to replace lost cells could vastly speed up stroke recovery. Researchers injected neural and vascular progenitor cells into rats’ brains 24 hours after a stroke. Thanks to progenitor cells replacing dead brain and blood vessel cells, rats that received the treatment regained mobility much faster.

Written by Tristan Farrow

Tristan Farrow

Writer

British Science Association Media Fellow. He holds a degree in quantum physics from the University of Cambridge and a Research Fellowship in quantum effects in biology.

• Image by Carol N. Ibe And Eugene O. Major from National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)
• National Institutes of Health, USA
• Image in the public domain, Wikimedia Commons
• Research published in Stem Cell Reports, July 2014