Currently, there are no treatments for neonatal stroke, the blockage or rupture of a brain blood vessel in the first 28 days of life. This leads to babies being born with intellectual disabilities, behavioural problems, cerebral palsy and epilepsy.
The Biomedical Health and Innovation Platform has supported Dr Bobbi Fleiss’ research on the role of inflammation in injury to the preterm infant brain and strategies to facilitate repair and support regeneration. In 2018 Bobbi received Platform funding which led to receiving a three-year industry grant worth $250K from the Cerebral Palsy Alliance.
Bobbi was also part of the research team PREMSTEM who were successful in obtaining €9M in funding from the European Union’s prestigious Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme. The five-year project (starting in 2020) will see a therapy ready for clinical trials to see if it will treat brain injury in premature born infants.
The Platform supported a symposium on “Discovery of New Therapeutics for Chronic Diseases”, run by RMIT and Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, where Bobbi presented and engaged with industry. This event helped to establish links between investigators from both institutions and to share research capacity, leading to the RMIT-NJUCM research partnership.
Bobbi contributed to the joint publication: Nitazoxanide, an anti-parasitic drug, efficiently ameliorates learning and memory impairments in AD model mice.
