Ischemic Stroke is a major burden ; annually about 16 million strokes occur in the world, causing a total of 5,7 million deaths while about one third of patients experience permanent disability. As a result of population aging, an increase by 20% in ischemic stroke cases is forecasted by 2022
Mainstay of stroke prevention is risk factor management: smoking cessation, treatment of high blood pressure and heart disease. But when Acute Ischemic Stroke occurs, until recently intravenous recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (rtPA) has been the only proven reperfusion therapy for acute cerebral ischemia.
Recently mechanical thrombectomy has become the standard of care in patients with Acute ischemic stroke with a proximal large vessel occlusion, improving the long term clinical and functional outcome significantly.
Today less than 10% of patients suffering from Acute Ischemic Stroke can be treated by rtPA or thrombectomy. Success rate of these treatments is still limited for different reasons : patients can only be selected after angiography (which delay time window for administration to patient) and reperfusion is associated with acute severe inflammatory response that increase cerebral damage.
ORPHIT objective is to develop until clinical Proof Of Concept a new drug candidate (ORPH001) that will control Acute Inflammatory Response during reperfusion.
ORPH001 is a safe well tolerated neuroprotective agent that will be further developed as a first line emergency care in Ambulance, which will protect and limit damage extension before use of thombolytics/thrombectomy therapy.
