Beyond Glutamate Antagonists for Treatment of Ischemic Stroke: Blood Glutamate Grabbing

Abstract

Glutamate-excitotoxicity is a primary contributor of ischemic neuronal death. Several strategies have been developed against glutamate-excitotoxicity, however any of them have not showed positive results in the clinical practice so far. Nowadays, the concept of blood/brain glutamate grabbing is well recognized as a novel and attractive protective strategy to reduce the excitotoxic effect of excess extracellular glutamate that accumulates in the brain following an ischemic stroke. The main advantage of this novel therapeutic strategy is that occurs in the blood circulation and therefore does not affect the normal brain neurophysiology, as it has been described for other drug treatments used against glutamate excitotoxicity. In this work, we summarize all experimental data about the potential application of this therapy against stroke pathology.