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Healing traumatic brain injuries with self-assembling peptide hydrogels

Reporter : Irina Robu, PhD

In 2014, TBIs resulted in about 2.53 million emergency department visits in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A traumatic brain injury (TBI) can range from a mild concussion to a severe head injury. It is caused by a blow to the head or body, a wound that breaks through the skull or another injury that jars or shakes the brain. Individuals with traumatic brain injuries can develop secondary disorders after the initial blow. Researchers, Biplab Sarkar and Vivek Kumar from New Jersey Institute of Technology are hoping to prevent secondary disorders by injecting a self-assembling peptide hydrogel into the brains of rats with traumatic brain injury and see what happens. They observed that the hydrogel helped blood vessels regrow in addition to neuronal survival.

The researchers explained that after traumatic brain injury, the brain can amass glutamate which kills some neurons which is marked by overactive oxygen-containing molecules (oxidative stress), inflammation and disruption of the blood-brain barrier. Furthermore, TBI survivors can experience impaired motor control and depression. Within the experiment, the researchers showed that a week after injecting the gel in rats, the neurons have twice as many neurons at the injury site than the control animals did.

The NJIT researchers distinguished that they needed to inject the hydrogel directly in a rat’s brain just seconds after a TBI, which is not ideal, because it would be impossible to give a patient the treatment within that short period of time. The next step in showing that the self-assembling peptide hydrogel works is to combine their previous blood vessel-growing peptide and the new version to see whether it could enhance recovery. And the researchers plan to inspect whether the hydrogels work for more diffuse brain injuries such as concussions.

SOURCE

https://www.fiercebiotech.com/research/healing-traumatic-brain-injuries-self-assembling-peptide-hydrogels