One in four strokes are caused by a condition called cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD). There are no approved treatments for CSVD. There also no treatments for patients with stroke who are being transported to hospital in typical ambulances. A promising therapy for both these settings is “remote ischemic conditioning” or RIC. It involves inflating and deflating blood pressure cuffs over and over in the arm or leg. It may help reduce the build up of strokes in people with small vessel disease. It may also help keep the brain alive longer in people suffering a stroke.

Many challenges with current RIC devices prevent us from conducting large trials well. They are not well suited for ambulance use and are tough to customize for different patients or settings. It is also tough to monitor how patients tolerate the treatment. We will develop and test our own, next-generation RIC device that overcomes these limitations.

Our engineering team will develop a fully functioning version of the device. We will then obtain Health Canada approval to test the device in humans. We will recruit 24 patients with small vessel disease and stroke to use the device for 30 days. This will help us understand how they tolerate the treatment and if it is easy to use. We don’t expect any major safety issues. We will also invite 10 stroke doctors and paramedics to use the device. We will also test the device in a stroke ambulance with 10 patients. We will update the device using feedback from all the participants. This will ensure that our device is suitable for use in stroke ambulances and by patients with small vessel disease. We will then be ready to launch national clinical trials of the device for both small vessel disease and ambulance-based stroke treatment.