Novel therapeutic strategies and targets for the treatment of stroke

This Special Issue is a collection of original articles and reviews reflecting the interests of those stroke clinicians and scientists who contributed to the First Turkish International Stroke Meeting ‘Novel Therapeutic Strategies and Targets for the Treatment of Stroke’, which was held in October, 2011, in Antalya. In that meeting, and with the assistance of a small conference grant from the ISN, we discussed findings upon which to build potential future therapeutic approaches. The goal was to increase understanding of the manner in which multiple injury mechanisms converge and interact, leading to the pathology observed during and after stroke. The novelty of the meeting was that, in addition to neurons and their dendrites, emphasis was placed on mechanisms of disruption of the neurovascular unit, and on the direct response of myelinated axons and glial cells to ischemic injury. This challenges the existing convention in stroke research, which assumes a common mechanism of injury to cell types in the brain. The program comprised sessions that addressed neurovascular changes during injury and recovery, the role of inflammatory changes in the CNS and PNS, mitochondrial dynamics and brain energy metabolism in gray and white matter, the value of imaging as a diagnostic and prognostic tool and new frontiers that could translate into future successful clinical approaches.

Conflicts of interest

The author has declared no potential conflicts of interest.