Tissue Engineering Strategies for Traumatic Brain Injury
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Over the course of my summer internship, I had the opportunity to attend several interesting seminars on bioengineering. Tissue engineering is one of many strategies which have potential to treat certain diseases and injuries, including certain neurological problems. Tissue engineering is broadly defined as the use of a combination of cells, engineering materials (scaffolds), and biochemical factors to improve or replace biological functions.
Dr. Michelle LaPlaca of the Georgia Institute of Technology gave a very interesting talk about the potential of neural stem cell transplantation strategies for the treatment of traumatic injury.
To summarize, traumatic injury to the brain and spinal cord (when not fatal) results in a range of deficits depending on the severity and region affected. It primarily affects young males ages 15 to 24 (big shock) and elderly people of both sexes 75 years and older. There are not really any effective treatments aimed toward restoring function. Also, the initial trauma leads to long-term brain damage as not only the brain cells are damaged, but also the cellular repair mechanisms. Researchers have shown that cell death can occur for months after the initial incident.
One of the proposed methods of treating brain injuries is to transplant neural stem cells into the injured site, which could then, hopefully, differentiate into new functional tissue. This group takes this idea a step further, combining cell transplantation with an extracellular matrix protein-based scaffold delivered into the irregular shaped lesions that form after a traumatic insult in the hopes that this will encourage cell survival and favorable behavior. Preliminary work has shown that stem cells in this environment migrated to areas of the brain migrated to areas associated with delayed damage. Future work may be done in developing better biopolymer scaffolds and the addition of other factors which may halt post-trauma damage.
What I found interesting about this research is that you so seldom hear about therapies to deal with direct damage to the brain and spinal cord, and its encouraging to think that there might be something we can do to at least halt the spread of damage in less severe cases. However, it still looks like we’ve still got quite a way to go.
Check out what’s going on with the LaPlaca Group.
Dr. Michelle LaPlaca of the Georgia Institute of Technology gave a very interesting talk about the potential of neural stem cell transplantation strategies for the treatment of traumatic injury.
To summarize, traumatic injury to the brain and spinal cord (when not fatal) results in a range of deficits depending on the severity and region affected. It primarily affects young males ages 15 to 24 (big shock) and elderly people of both sexes 75 years and older. There are not really any effective treatments aimed toward restoring function. Also, the initial trauma leads to long-term brain damage as not only the brain cells are damaged, but also the cellular repair mechanisms. Researchers have shown that cell death can occur for months after the initial incident.
One of the proposed methods of treating brain injuries is to transplant neural stem cells into the injured site, which could then, hopefully, differentiate into new functional tissue. This group takes this idea a step further, combining cell transplantation with an extracellular matrix protein-based scaffold delivered into the irregular shaped lesions that form after a traumatic insult in the hopes that this will encourage cell survival and favorable behavior. Preliminary work has shown that stem cells in this environment migrated to areas of the brain migrated to areas associated with delayed damage. Future work may be done in developing better biopolymer scaffolds and the addition of other factors which may halt post-trauma damage.
What I found interesting about this research is that you so seldom hear about therapies to deal with direct damage to the brain and spinal cord, and its encouraging to think that there might be something we can do to at least halt the spread of damage in less severe cases. However, it still looks like we’ve still got quite a way to go.
Check out what’s going on with the LaPlaca Group.
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