[Development of new stroke therapies: outlook for neuroprotective drugs].

Stroke remains one of the most urgent medical problems of our times. The failure of most neuroprotective drugs in clinical trials led to the initiation of the Stroke Therapy Academic Industry Roundtable guidelines. Due to this improvement, the positive clinical trial results with the free radical scavenger NXY-059 (SAINT I) was encouraging. However, the subsequent SAINT II trial did not confirm these results. In this article we critically review the history of preclinical and clinical trials based on experience of NXY-059 development and present recommendations for potential future preclinical and clinical development of neuroprotective stroke therapy.