Hibernating ground squirrels provide clues to new stroke treatments

While the animals’ brains experience dramatically reduced blood flow during hibernation, just like human patients after a certain type of stroke, the squirrels emerge from their extended naps suffering no ill effects. Now, a team of scientists has identified a potential drug that could grant the same resilience to the brains of ischemic stroke patients by mimicking the cellular changes that protect the brains of those animals.

Hibernating ground squirrels provide clues to new stroke treatments. Image credit: Bob Duindam/Wikimedia Commons (PD)

An ischemic stroke occurs when a clot cuts off blood flow to part of the brain, depriving those cells of oxygen and nutrients like the blood sugar glucose that they need to survive.

Currently, the only way to minimize stroke-induced cell death is to remove the clot as soon as possible. A treatment to help brain cells survive a stroke-induced lack of oxygen and glucose could dramatically improve patient outcomes, but no such neuroprotective agents for stroke patients exist.

Recently, researchers found that a cellular process called SUMOylation goes into overdrive in a certain species of ground squirrel during hibernation. This was how the animals’ brains survived the reduced blood flow caused by hibernation.

SUMOylation occurs when an enzyme attaches a molecular tag called a Small Ubiquitin-like Modifier (SUMO) to a protein, altering its activity and location in the cell. Other enzymes called SUMO-specific proteases (SENPs) can then detach those tags, thereby decreasing SUMOylation.

The researchers first used an automated process to examine whether the compounds prevented SENP2 from severing the connection between a tiny metal bead and an artificial SUMO protein created in the lab.

This system, along with computer modeling and further tests performed both in and outside of cells, whittled the thousands of candidate molecules down to eight that could bind to SENP2 in cells and were non-toxic.

Two of those – ebselen and 6-thioguanine – were then found to both boost SUMOylation in rat cells and keep them alive in the absence of oxygen and glucose.

A final experiment showed that ebselen boosted SUMOylation in the brains of healthy mice more than a control injection. 6-thioguanine was not tested because it is a chemotherapy drug with side effects that make it unsuitable as a potential stroke treatment.

The researchers now plan to test whether ebselen can protect the brains of animal models of stroke. (National Institutes of Health)

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