There may be new treatments for stroke, migraine, Alzheimer’s and other brain disorders, thanks to the discovery of a mechanism for regulating brain blood flow made by researchers at the University of British Columbia. Scientists found that astrocytes -- cells that surround nerve cells and all blood vessels in the brain -- have a primary role in regulating blood flow within the brain, and hold promise as a target for new therapies. The findings of the two-year study funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Canadian Stroke Network were published this week in Nature by UBC post-doctoral fellow Sean Mulligan and Brian MacVicar, a professor in the Brain Research Centre and the Dept. of Psychiatry at UBC and an investigator with the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute (VCHRI).
