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University of Wyoming

UW Technologies Available for Licensing


Technology Disclosure: 04-004/04-033 Prevention of or Recovery from Stress Induced Crash in Blood Pressure

 

The body’s response to severe trauma, regardless of the inciting incident (heat stroke, myocardial infarction, etc.) frequently is characterized by a common neurological and physiological cascade which can be lethal. This cascade involves a rise in blood pressure, a precipitous fall in blood pressure, shock and ultimately may culminate in death. If it was possible to pharmacologically intervene in this cascade, particularly at the blood pressure crash stage, the survivability of certain accidents, heat stroke or heart attack could be significantly greater than today’s statistics indicate.

Researchers at the University of Wyoming’s Department of Zoology and Physiology have discovered and filed a patent application (WO2005/032573 A1) on the observation that certain synthetic small peptides can quickly restore blood pressure after trauma as well as increase tolerance to certain kinds of stress, like heat, in a rodent model. These peptides are closely related to some naturally occurring agents that have already been shown to provide protection from the cold (hibernation factors) or from hunger, thirst, and fear (opioids in the skin of a frog, Phyllomedusa bicolor).

As you can understand, such compounds could have immediate field and clinical applications in places like the military and emergency medicine, and more generally in hospitals, and acute care centers worldwide. Last summer alone, 11,000 people died in France as a result of heat stroke causing French authorities (including president Jacques Chirac) to promise that “everything will be done” to find a way decrease these mortality rates.

If you would like to learn more about this technology and how your company may evaluate it and license it for possible commercialization, please contact the director of the University of Wyoming Research Products Center, Davona Douglass. We would be pleased to enter a confidentiality agreement and share further details.