ProteoMonitor tells us about some fascinating research going on between scientists at Thermo Fisher Scientific's BRIMS Center and Massachusetts General Hospital to identify protein biomarkers linked to stroke.
The group is exploring the relationship between strokes and patent foramen ovale, which is a congenital heart defect. Everybody is born with this opening between the left and right chambers of the heart. But if it fails to close soon after birth, the hole is called patent foramen ovale. ProteoMonitor reports that a phenotype that results from this opening could allow a blood clot to travel to the brain and possibly cause a stroke.
The group, led in part by MingMing Ning, a scientist at MGH's Clinical Proteomics Research Center, is trying to identify protein markers to guide doctors' use of tissue plasminogen activator in stroke treatment, according to ProteoMonitor.
"It's not just the brain itself that's the problem," Ning told ProteoMonitor. Key to better understanding the disease is to "better understand the signaling between the heart and the brain," she said. The researchers hope the BRIMS biomarker work will help them better understand this signaling.
- read the article in ProteoMonitor
- and learn more about MingMing Ning's research