Nearly 500,000 Australians are living with the effects of stroke, a number that could balloon to nearly one million by 2050 . As one of the biggest causes of disability in Australia, stroke is an area of concern for us all and a focus of the Beluga Foundation. For our founder, Brendan McAssey, these statistics are very real, as his father, Danny, suffered his first stroke at 50 and successive strokes until he died at 56. With each stroke, Danny’s health deteriorated more and more – he was partially paralysed, lost his peripheral vision and suffered a speech impairment. This experience spurred Brendan’s desire to change this reality for future stroke sufferers.

His ability to make meaningful change occurred almost by chance in 2018. He happened to tune into a radio segment featuring Professor Chris Sobey at La Trobe University, who was about to abandon his decade-long research into stroke treatment due to lack of funding. Brendan reached out and asked Professor Sobey to pitch to the Beluga Foundation board who, then and there, unanimously decided to grant him $1.2 million to fund phase one of human clinical trials. After astounding results in a treatment that requires no pharmaceutical product, phase two is about to commence thanks to Beluga Foundation’s donation of $6 million.

This is an ongoing partnership between Beluga Foundation and La Trobe University that has the potential to drastically improve outcomes for stroke patients on a global scale. But, because there’s no pharmaceutical product linked to the research, government funding is almost impossible to secure.

If stroke research is something your organisation would like to support, please get in contact with us to discuss partnerships.