That swelling now damages other tissue, and it creates a bad cycle.”At the time, there were few treatments for patients with brain swelling. For the past 15 years, he has helped lead a translational program in acute stroke treatment from the laboratory to human studies, specifically a first-of-its-kind treatment for brain swelling after stroke. At the time, Bush had declared the 1990s the “Decade of the Brain” to promote public awareness and support for brain research. When Simard looked at one of the ion channels more closely, he noticed that its structure was similar to that of ion channels in the pancreas. Some drugs used to treat diabetes, like glyburide, specifically target those ion channels, and so Sheth and Simard wondered if you could similarly target ion channels in the brain with glyburide to treat brain swelling after stroke.