A Seoul National University Hospital (SNUH) professor has developed a new drug for subarachnoid hemorrhage that had significantly increased survival rate during a preclinical trial.

Professor Lee Seung-hoon

The incidence of subarachnoid hemorrhage is high in Korea. The Health Insurance Review and Assessment says more than 30,000 new cases occurred in 2017 alone.

Currently, only the method of obstructing the cause of aneurysm by surgery or intervention is valid clinically. However, these methods only prevent further bleeding, and there is no treatment for inflammation caused by blood, which is the cause of the high mortality rate.

Professor Lee Seung-hoon investigated whether ceria nanoparticles which have potent antioxidative activities can protect against subarachnoid hemorrhage via attenuating fatal brain injuries and developed CX-11. The new substance is a drug encapsulated with polyethylene glycol by linking cerium oxide with 6-aminohexanoic acid, a dispersion stabilizer, and has an excellent effect for removing active oxygen.

Unlike other substances, it is a new drug candidate showing strong multi-functionality that removes almost all kinds of active oxygen such as superoxide, hydrogen peroxide, and hydroxyl radical at once.

Professor Lee found that the survival rate of the rats that received the drug in the preclinical trial was 88.2 percent compared to the 21.1 percent of the control group. Lee also confirmed that the activity of surviving rats was much better in the treatment group than in the control group.

“There is no drug treatment other than nimodipine to prevent vasospasm in subarachnoid hemorrhage,” Professor Lee said. “The hospital aims to recognize CX-11 as an essential drug in reducing the inflammatory response of blood in this disease.”

To accomplish its goal, the hospital plans to submit an investigational new drug application for CX-11.

Subarachnoid hemorrhage, primarily caused by a rupture of the cerebral aneurysm, is the most devastating type of stroke with a mortality rate up to 57 percent at six months, and about 10 percent of patients die before arriving at the hospital.

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