Applied neuroscience

Dr Banerjee aims to set up three studies to improve our understanding of how damaging proteins in the brain may increase the risk of stroke. This can lead the way for researchers to find out how we can help more people avoid damage to their brain caused by these proteins. 

This research will investigate 2000 drugs that are already known to be safe for use in humans to see if they could help reduce the amount of damage to the brain which an intracerebral haemorrhage (a type of stroke caused by a bleed in the brain) causes.

This project is part of a larger on-going study into Small Vessel Disease (SVD) after stroke. It will allow the researchers to invite some of the participants in this project back for more frequent brain scans and tests to help them to understand more about SVD after stroke.

Torpor is a natural state of reduced energy use and body temperature. This research will look at the effect of torpor on brain activity and function, and the amount of brain damage caused by ischaemic stroke.

The overall purpose of this research is to make laboratory stroke experiments more reliable and useful for informing how to design human clinical trials with a higher chance of success.

People with stroke due to brain haemorrhage have swelling around the haemorrhage on their brain scan. More swelling worsens recovery. No treatment improves outcome after this swelling.

The programme will use biological information about cells and molecules, and information from patients, to design a study of treatment for swelling after a brain haemorrhage.

The aim of this research programme is to develop a human brain bank to support biomedical research into the pathophysiology of human SVD that may be used nationally and internationally. 

Inflammation is an important defence mechanism that the body uses in response to injury or infection. However, it can also be highly damaging to the brain directly after stroke. This study will investigate whether adult stem cells can be transformed and used to reduce inflammation in the brain after stroke, and promote recovery.

Intracerebral haemorrhage (ICH) is a type of stroke, which is caused by bleeding in the brain, ultimately leading to brain damage, disability and often death. We currently know very little about the biological changes that occur in the brain after intracerebral haemorrhage. This research on ICH will use zebrafish models so that we can gain a much better understanding of how cells of the brain respond to the bleeding and if there are ways that we can stop the damage caused.

Small Vessel Disease (SVD) is a condition that affects the small blood vessels in the brain, and it can lead to stroke and dementia. This research programme hopes to increase our understanding of how SVD develops, leading to new ways to investigate SVD and test drugs which may help treat it.