A Multi-Model Pipeline for Translational Intracerebral Haemorrhage Research

Apart from acute and chronic blood pressure lowering, we have no specific medications to prevent intracerebral haemorrhage (ICH) or improve outcomes once bleeding has occurred. One reason for this may be related to particular limitations associated with the current pre-clinical models of ICH, leading to a failure to translate into the clinic. It would seem that a breakdown in the ‘drug development pipeline’ currently exists for translational ICH research which needs to be urgently addressed. Here, we review the most commonly used pre-clinical models of ICH and discuss their advantages and disadvantages in the context of translational studies. We propose that to increase our chances of successfully identifying new therapeutics for ICH, a bi-directional, 2- or 3-pronged approach using more than one model species/system could be useful for confirming key pre-clinical observations. Furthermore, we highlight that post-mortem/ex-vivo ICH patient material is a precious and underused resource which could play an essential role in the verification of experimental results prior to consideration for further clinical investigation. Embracing multidisciplinary collaboration between pre-clinical and clinical ICH research groups will be essential to ensure the success of this type of approach in the future.