NIH https://www.nih.gov has awarded $8.3 million to enable researchers at the Brain Injury Research Center at Mount Sinai https://www.mountsinai.org to investigate the clinical and biological features that distinguish chronic and static effects of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) from those associated with progressive post traumatic neurodegeneration.
“While understanding the long term implications of TBI is of critical importance, very little is actually known about the clinical and pathological signatures of post TBI neurodegeneration or its overlap with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias,” said Kristen Dams-O’Connor, PhD, Director of the Brain Injury Research Center at Mount Sinai.
Specific aims for the research include:
- Identifying head trauma exposure thresholds associated with post traumatic neurodegeneration risk
- Examining post traumatic neurodegeneration in a life course framework to elucidate early life environmental factors associated with risk and resilience
- Identifying fluid and imaging biomarkers to define the underlying pathologies of post traumatic neurodegeneration.
- Seeking post-mortem validation of the in-vivo biomarkers of post traumatic neurodegeneration in the LETBI autopsy cohort
According to Dr. Dams-O Conner, “Our strong interdisciplinary team is ideally positioned to take on this research challenge. We will leverage resources that have taken years to develop and then combine these resources with optimized clinical tools, precision molecular biomarkers, novel imaging methods, neuropathological innovations, and sophisticated statistical methods to improve our knowledge about the late effects of TBI and post traumatic neurodegeneration.
She further pointed out how the research will advance the research agenda of the National Alzheimer’s Disease Project Act by enabling the sharing of rich data resources in order to accelerate post TB dementia diagnostics and therapeutics.
Go to https://www.TBIcentral.org for more information.