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BAT VENOM STROKE DRUG

Doctors believe they have a huge breakthrough in the treatment of stroke victims…and it comes from the venom of vampire bats!

Bat venom has provided doctors with a drug for strokes. It’s an experimental drug, desmoteplase, which is a genetically engineered version of a clot busting agent found in the saliva of the vampire bat.

“I couldn’t put my coat on I kept dropping the keys, and I thought there was something the matter with me.” Three years ago, June macho had a stroke. She was taken here to the Cleveland Clinic. But she arrived several hours after the onset of her symptoms--way too late to receive the currently available clot busting drug TPA, which reopens the blocked blood flow to the brain that causes most strokes.

But June would be one of the very first patients in the country to get a new drug, that can be used beyond the three hour mark. “I tried anything otherwise I’d be nothing I would be laying flat on my back right now even in a coma, who knows,” says June.
For humans, desmoteplase is proving to be a powerful weapon against clots blocking the arteries which feed the brain. Dr. Anthony Furland, the lead investigator at the Cleveland Clinic, says, “It zeros in like a guided missile right on the clot.”

An important study just presented at a major medical conference shows that desmoteplase can treat stroke patients up to nine hours after the onset of symptoms. That’s a big deal, because that’s three times longer than the best treatment we currently have.

“Today only about 5% of stroke patients have access to IVTPA for the same reason that they don’t get to the hospital in time. With a 3 hour drug, we’re probably never going to treat more than 10% maybe 15% of stroke patients,” states Dr. Furland. By being able to extend that window to nine hours, perhaps three times that could be treated. In studies thus far, 60% of patients getting desmoteplase improved enough to live on their own within ninety days.

June got the drug nearly eight hours after her stroke symptoms began. She says it saved her life. “I do my own cooking, I live by myself I kept telling everyone they gave me a drug that helped,” states June.

Desmoteplase is on the FDA fast track. This spring, a multi-center study that will enroll many more patients in numerous sites across the country, including New York, will begin.

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