Grant: Doctoral Research Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) is a devastating stroke subtype that is fatal for over 40% of patients. ICH occurs when a blood vessel in the brain ruptures, causing blood to spill into the surrounding tissues and form a clot. The skull is a closed compartment, so a large blood clot takes up essential space in the brain and drives up pressure within the skull, with often fatal outcomes. Interestingly, we recently discovered a novel phenomenon in which brain cells experience a dramatic reduction in volume (up to 60%) in the days following a moderate to large ICH. We believe that this is a regulated process, in which brain cells get rid of compounds called osmolytes, which are low-weight organic molecules that influence properties of cells, such as protein stability, cell size regulation, and cellular health. By doing this, cells are able to reduce their size in attempt to equalize deadly pressure elevations and prevent death. However, by getting rid of osmolytes to reduce their size, cells are ridding themselves of an important protective mechanism essential for survival in a stroke setting. Therefore, we assert that the loss of protective osmolytes in order to maintain cell size reductions is detrimental to the health of brain cells, resulting in the global functional impairments that we observe in ICH patients, rather than local reductions in blood flow as previously thought. We aim to assess whether these cell size reductions occur across multiple brain cell types, examine the impact of stroke severity, and quantitatively determine how extreme cell size reductions impact cellular health and function through gold standard techniques such as electron microscopy and Fourier Transform Infrared Imaging.