Sewickley-based drug company teams up with Boston hospital to conduct stroke treatment study

In 2011, Howison Schroeder’s mother suffered a stroke. That was one of many reasons the CEO and co-founder of Sewickley-based Neuro-Innovators and his team of medical experts set out to find a treatment. The company recently signed a research agreement with the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston to conduct a study to see if the three-drug combination could help patients recover from a stroke.

“We’d like to think that our brains are the most complicated organisms in the world, in the universe, rather…how do we think we’re going to solve these problems with just one pill?” Schroeder said. “If we can pick two or three drugs that actually approach this in a multi-prong strategy, gee, shouldn’t we have a much more powerful effect on the brain?”

While he couldn’t say specifically what they are, Schroeder said each medication is FDA-approved and well-known to patients. He said this is the first drug combination to boost neuroplasticity, the brain’s capacity to create new connections in response to intrinsic or extrinsic stimuli, and is designed to improve the effectiveness of rehabilitation therapies and overall quality of life.

“One of the reasons we picked stroke is that the outcome measures are highly objective. If you can’t move your arm, I can measure that. Now you can move your arm, I can measure that improvement,” Schroeder said.

Forty stroke survivors diagnosed at least six months earlier will complete an eight-week rehab program while taking a daily dose of the cocktail. Once they’re finished with the study, a dosing study will follow.

“We think we could be commercial within five years,” Schroeder said.

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