I'm Dr. Daniel Rosenbaum, I'm professor and Chair of Department of Neurology, SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn. I'm a clinical neurologist by training. I have an interest in the area of strokes, cerebrovascular disease. Stroke is the third leading cause of death in the adult population in the United States and the single most important cause of disability in the adult population. As a consequence, any sort of treatment that would lessen the amount of damage that's associated with stroke would have a significant impact on the health of the adult population in the United States.

We are trying to take advantages of the body's own ability to protect itself from injury and we are looking at the use of a commonly used drug, erythropoietin, which is used to treat anemia. It turns out that this drug, in addition to its effect on the red blood cells, also has the ability to protect the brain from injury. And we are trying to see if this drug affords benefit in animal models of stroke.

Another area of research are the use of stem cells. Stem cells are cells that are very primitive in that they can be turned into just about any type of cell type in the body. One approach is to take these stem cells and use them to transplant them into a damaged brain to see if you can replace that area of brain that is damaged. There are many problems with this, both ethically as well as technically. Our approach of stem cells, rather than taking stem cells from elsewhere to transplant into the brain, is to try and harness the stem cells that are within our own brains by stimulating them and that will result in repair and recovery in patients who have stroke.