PittPharmacy faculty members Samuel M. Poloyac, PharmD, PhD and Lee A. McDermott, PhD, MBA have received a grant from the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke entitled "20-HETE Formation Inhibitors in Cardiac Arrest." This grant is funded by the NINDS Innovation Grants to Nurture Initial Translational Efforts (IGNITE) program, which aims to support studies in early drug discovery and development for the treatment of neurological disorders and stroke.
The funded proposal aims to discover novel compounds and optimize their drug-like properties to improve brain blood flow and decrease brain damage after pediatric cardiac arrest. Specifically, this team of investigators have identified novel enzyme inhibitors of a metabolite, 20-HETE, that is a known regulator of cerebral blood flow. This proposal will both optimize the drug-like properties of these compounds and evaluate the preclinical efficacy of these compounds to decrease brain damage after pediatric cardiac arrest.
Currently, there are no known medications that improve outcomes in children after cardiac arrest. Successful completion of this research would lead to the discovery of novel compounds with drug-like properties to be further advanced towards evaluation of efficacy and safety as a potential future therapeutic intervention.
Poloyac is a Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences, the Associate Dean for Graduate and Post-Doctoral Programs, and the Director of the Center for Clinical Pharmaceutical Sciences.
McDermott is an Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences.
Both Poloyac and McDermott are members of the Drug Design, Delivery, and Development (Drug D3) Center.
