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.
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This is very insightful. There is no doubt that there is the bias you refer to. 42 years ago, when I was postdocing in biochemistry/enzymology before completing my residency in pathology, I knew that there were very influential mambers of the faculty, who also had large programs, and attracted exceptional students. My mentor, it was said (although he was a great writer), could draft a project on toilet paper and call the NIH. It can’t be true, but it was a time in our history preceding a great explosion. It is bizarre for me to read now about eNOS and iNOS, and about CaMKII-á, â, ã, ä – isoenzymes. They were overlooked during the search for the genome, so intermediary metabolism took a back seat. But the work on protein conformation, and on the mechanism of action of enzymes and ligand and coenzyme was just out there, and became more important with the research on signaling pathways. The work on the mechanism of pyridine nucleotide isoenzymes preceded the work by Burton Sobel on the MB isoenzyme in heart. The Vietnam War cut into the funding, and it has actually declined linearly since.
A few years later, I was an Associate Professor at a new Medical School and I submitted a proposal that was reviewed by the Chairman of Pharmacology, who was a former Director of NSF. He thought it was good enough. I was a pathologist and it went to a Biochemistry Review Committee. It was approved, but not funded. The verdict was that I would not be able to carry out the studies needed, and they would have approached it differently. A thousand young investigators are out there now with similar letters. I was told that the Department Chairmen have to build up their faculty. It’s harder now than then. So I filed for and received 3 patents based on my work at the suggestion of my brother-in-law. When I took it to Boehringer-Mannheim, they were actually clueless.