Johns Hopkins Receives $50 Million for Stroke Institute

Johns Hopkins University has announced a $50 million gift from the United Arab Emirates to create an institute focused on stroke research and clinical care.

The Sheikh Khalifa Stroke Institute will enable top clinician-scientists at Johns Hopkins to build on their pioneering work in neurology and neurosurgery, leveraging advances in biomedical engineering, artificial intelligence, and precision medicine to better diagnose, treat, and restore function to stroke patients. According to the World Health Organization, about a third of  all stroke victims, or 5.5 million people, die each year. Of the survivors, two-thirds leave the hospital with a disability, the U.S. Stroke Association reports.

With locations in Baltimore and Abu Dhabi, the institute will house two centers of excellence around which new research and patient care efforts will be designed. The center of excellence in stroke detection and diagnosis will work to analyze the genetic underpinnings of stroke and develop interventions and new uses of imaging to better understand cerebrovascular events. The center of excellence in stroke treatment, recovery, and rehabilitation will focus on developing new approaches to getting blood vessels to regrow, delivering drugs and medications past the blood-brain barrier, and stimulating the brain to coax it to relearn movement post-stroke.

"We are grateful for the UAE's gift, which enables us to leverage our considerable strengths in neurology, physical medicine, and rehabilitation — in combination with our expertise in biomedical engineering and patient safety — to develop new tools for stroke diagnosis, treatment, and recovery," said Paul Rothman, dean of JHU's medical faculty and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine. "These efforts will improve the health of millions of people in Baltimore, the UAE, and around the world."

"This new institute will not only generate better outcomes for stroke patients in the UAE and the U.S. but will also strengthen opportunities for collaboration between UAE and U.S. scientists and researchers," said Yousef Al Otaiba, UAE ambassador to the U.S. "We are grateful to Johns Hopkins for their continued leadership in patient-centered medicine and are proud of our longstanding partnership."