The Brain Aneurysm Foundation is a philanthropic group that was founded by family members of those that have suffered ruptured brain aneurysms to support awareness and to fund brain aneurysm research in treating the aneurysm or the sequelae of ruptured aneurysm.
"This grant will allow us to move from purely dealing with anatomy to function. We can alter the function of the vessel as opposed to just its physical size."
- John Moriarty, MD
"We've been treating cerebral vasospasm endovascularly and using medicines. No combination to date have given us the success we'd like to see. We need to take a different approach and this new direction is very promising."
- Satoshi Tateshima, MD, PhD
In our early work, we looked at the patterns of spasm following aneurysm rupture. Coincidently, I attended a lecture by Dr. John Moriarty and he was speaking about a new procedure in the Body IR world called Endovascular Sympathetic Denervation using a device called Symplicity. My thought was that these sympathetic nerves are also pretty prominent in the brain and they play a significant role in vasospasm. There hasn't been a lot of research targeted towards modulating those nerves and Symplicity seemed like it might do well in this area.
The Brain Aneurysm Foundation Grant offers a great opportunity to work with a new endovascular sympathectomy device on models, where our goal will be to treat or rescue spasm through modulating the sympathetic nervous system.
