UTHealth Houston receives federal funding for traumatic brain injury research
Summary
Nearly $13 million in federal grant funds to study treatments for traumatic brain injury, which kills an average of 190 people and hospitalizes another 600 in the U.S. every day, has been awarded to UTHealth Houston by the Department of Defenses Office of Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP).The funding marks a positive step forward for patients suffering from the medical condition, said Charles S. Cox Jr., MD, the George and Cynthia Mitchell Distinguished Chair in Neurosciences and the Glassell Family Distinguished Chair in the Department of Pediatric Surgery with McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston, and a member of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Houston School of Biomedical Sciences.There arent any effective treatments for patients with traumatic brain injury theres no drug you can take or operation you can have. Hemorrhagic shock occurs when severe blood loss leads to inadequate oxygen delivery at the cellular level.The Focused Program Award will be executed within the Center for Translational Injury Research (CeTIR) in the Department of Surgery at McGovern Medical School. Erin Fox, PhD, assistant director of CeTIR, leads the Program Core.The first project, led by Jessica Cardenas, PhD, will investigate the role that fragments of fibrin and fibrinogen proteins present in blood plasma play in the disruption of the blood-brain barrier during traumatic brain injury and hemorrhagic shock. Juranek is an associate professor in the Department of Pediatric Surgery.Meanwhile, a four-year, nearly $5 million grant is intended to fund Phase II of a stem cell clinical trial that began in 2019. The second phase of the study is slated to begin in September at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center, pending approval from UTHealth Houstons Internal Review Board.The study is evaluating whether intravenously infused, adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells produced by Hope Biosciences reduce the chronic neuroinflammatory response to traumatic brain injury.