Stroke Models
- Why have so many drugs with stellar results in laboratory stroke models failed
in clinical trials?
S.H.Curry. Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. Volume 993, pp69 - 74 (2003)
- Trials and tribulations in the search for stroke drugs.
S.H.Curry. Preclinica. Volume 2, pp 384 - 387.
These two papers explore the fact that as many as fifteen drugs that have shown excellent
activity in animal models of stroke, including work in rats, mice, marmosets and other
species, have failed to show activity in humans when subjected to Phase II and III clinical
trials. Allometric relationship concepts are invoked to suggest that the drugs, although
mostly given in doses that would be expected to have the desired neuroprotective effect,
have not been given for long enough to the patients for the effect to become established.