This would buy the brain time until clot-busting drugs could be given in hospital.
Germany's Paion is developing a clot-buster originally found in the venom of vampire bats.
In some instances giving patients the clot-busting drugs could make damage to the brain worse.
Dominating the market for clot-busting technology is Possis Medical (nasdaq: POSS - news - people ).
One is to pair a better clot-buster with a technique for selecting patients most likely to benefit from it.
New clot-busting drugs allow some stroke patients to make a full recovery if treated within three hours of their attack.
The drugs work by blocking an enzyme called factor 10a that helps spur the production of a crucial clot-promoting protein called thrombin.
But we need to find out why some people bleed and how to reduce this to increase the effectiveness of clot-busting treatment.
Copies of top-selling medicines like Amgen 's Epogen, for anemia, or the clot-buster Lovenox, made by Sanofi-Aventis, could be the new me-too drugs.
Their hope is that such a drug would be precious to patients with ischemic strokes and, unlike clot-buster drugs, harmless to those with hemorrhagic strokes.
Responding to the research, the Stoke Association's Dr Clare Walton said clot-busters did not work for all patients so new techniques could help many patients.
Another big hope: Alfimiprase, a clot-buster developed by San Carlos, Calif.
For now, treatment of strokes is pretty much limited to Genentech's clot-busting drug, Activase, a tissue plasminogen activator, which is primarily used to treat heart attacks.
At least 20 antistroke compounds have entered large human trials in recent years after promising lab results, but only one, Genentech's clot-buster Activase, has made it to the market.
Dr Thiemann says there are several possible reasons for differences between the new findings and the conventional wisdom, which was based on research trials of clot-busting drugs conducted about a decade ago.
One study found that chest-pain patients who were treated aggressively -- with, say, angioplasty, cardiac bypass or sophisticated clot-busting drugs -- did better than those whose doctors took a "wait and see" approach.
Premature deaths from heart disease - the single biggest killer - are down by a quarter since 1997, with a third more heart operations, twice as many patients receiving immediate access to clot-busting drugs and cholesterol lowering drugs now prescribed to 1.8 million people.
BBC: NEWS | UK | Politics | Full text: Blair on public services
The most impressive experimental drug Schering is developing is an anti-clot agent to prevent heart attacks.
Most nights during the holidays, the streets surrounding the Clot house were cluttered with wide-eyed pilgrims.
WSJ: Embracing the Robo Elves of the Bill Clot Christmas Display | Traveler's Tale
But a second piece of research looked at 14 fatal cases and found that in five there was evidence of pre-existing pulmonary-embolic disease, and in four the fatal clot had formed before the flight.
It is unclear exactly how the fat increases the clot risk, but experts believe it could be partly physical - compression on the veins - and partly chemical - fat cells make hormones that encourage clotting.
Its device uses a high-speed jet at the tip of a catheter to wash out a clot and then vacuum it out.
Doctors can break up the clot by using Activase, a drug used by Genentech (nyse: DNA - news - people ), but that drug must be used quickly after the stroke happens.
应用推荐