Another study showed the extract also had a protective effect when administered after a stroke. The results have been so good that the Suns believe that the extract should be given to stroke patients. "This is very practical and very useful," Albert Sun says. "Now, we think when a patient has had a stroke it may help to immediately feed them the extract."

The Suns are finding that the extract's value isn't limited to minimizing brain damage after a stroke occurs. They have evidence now that it may be worthwhile to use the extract to fortify the diets of elderly persons who are simply at risk for stroke.

The Suns determined this by adding the extract to gerbil chow and feeding it to the animals for two months. Again, after strokes were induced, the gerbils that had eaten the extract as part of their diets suffered less impairment. "It's not a medicine that would cure something," Grace Sun says. "But this is probably a good preventive measure for older people."

While there are plenty of grape extract supplements on the market, the Suns aren't proposing that people run out and buy any of them. On the contrary. Nutritional supplements aren't subjected to the same regulatory scrutiny that prescription drugs receive.

"You don't know what they put in them," she says. "But it is good to have a healthful diet with fruits and vegetables." And besides that, the protection grape extract provides isn't complete. So the Suns are looking for other natural compounds that may provide additional safeguards. One likely candidate is turmeric, a spice widely used in curry powder that is also an antioxidant. There's epidemiological evidence that people in India, where plenty of curry is consumed, have lower rates of Alzheimer's disease than people in the United States. The Suns are looking for a suitable animal model for Alzheimer's disease in order to give turmeric a try.

The Suns' careers have taken a number of serendipitous turns like this that have led them to potentially very useful results. "We stumbled into this very happily with a good ending," Albert Sun says.

The couple met in the early 1960s while they were graduate students at Oregon State University. Grace was born in Hong Kong and came to the U.S. to attend college at Seattle Pacific University. Albert was born on the Chinese mainland and raised on Taiwan. He came to the United States as a graduate student.

The Suns married in 1964. Three years later, they had their PhDs and moved to Cleveland, where Albert Sun held a position at Case Western Reserve University. A couple of years later, both were hired by the state of Ohio's mental health system and began their lifelong study of the brain.

The Suns joined the MU faculty in 1974 after she received an appointment to the biochemistry department and he earned a position with the department of medical pharmacology and physiology. While they each have their own labs and projects, they have always collaborated on research as well. "Do we have a choice?" Grace Sun quipped. "It's very good to team up," Albert Sun added quickly. "We compensate each other." His expertise is with proteins, for example, hers with lipids. "We can talk things over at the dinner table," Albert Sun says.

"We don't always agree," Grace Sun says. "We argue, but that's part of our life."

The couple's most important collaboration has been their daughter, a computer scientist who recently gave them a grandson. They live in New Jersey, and that's become a serious factor in the Suns' plans.

These days their chief domestic debate is whether, when the time comes, to retire in Columbia where they have strong ties to the University and their church, or to move closer to their family back East. In either case, the Suns still have more work ahead of them to see to it that victims of stroke benefit from the good things they've found in red wine.

"We would like this research to go on to the practice side," Grace Sun says. "That is our goal."