Johns Hopkins researchers have shown that brain damage was reduced by as much as 62.2 percent in mice who inhale low amounts of carbon monoxide after an induced stroke. The scientists say that although carbon monoxide (CO) gas has a long reputation as an odorless, colorless cause of organ damage and even death, there is now evidence that it can protect nerve cells from damage. Some of the brain damage associated with stroke results directly from a cut-off in blood supply to nerve cells.

National Institutes of Health U.S. researchers have developed a hand-exercising robotic device that appears to help stroke victims recover motor skills, even more than six months after a stroke. Brain scans suggested that the device, which patients squeeze with their stroke-afflicted hands, boosted activity in the part of the brain that handles use of the hands. Stroke is the third leading cause of death in the United States, trailing only heart disease and cancer, and a leading cause of severe long-term disability. An estimated 700,000 cases of stroke are diagnosed in the country annually.

ExonHit Therapeutics S.A. has announced the availability of its new SpliceArray™ for use in studying mouse models of human disease. These SpliceArrayTM products help our clients accelerate their therapeutic target discovery and validation efforts. Using our high resolution expression profiling analysis, we identify novel transcripts coding for new protein variants that may be involved in various genetic disorders such as oncology, central nervous system, or immune system disorders. This mouse SpliceArrayTM products represent the achievement of more two years of work by our R&D team after the launch of the Human genome SpliceArrayTM and the rat genome SpliceArrayTM.