A team of researchers have been awarded $6 million to develop nanotechnology therapies for the treatment of traumatic brain injury and associated infections. With this new funding from the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a multi-disciplinary team of renowned experts in laboratory research, translational investigation and clinical medicine will come together, led by Michael J. Sailor, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD).
According to the most recent estimate from the Joint Theatre Trauma Registry – a compilation of data collected during Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom – 18% of battlefield wounds sustained by men and women who served in Iraq and Afghanistan consist of ballistics injuries that penetrate the skull. Researcher Clark C. Chen of the UCSD School of Medicine, a neurosurgeon with the UCSD Health System, explained, ‘A major contributor to the mortality associated with a penetrating brain injury is the elevated risk of intracranial infection,’ as projectiles drive contaminated foreign materials into neural tissue.
Under normal conditions, a physiological system called the blood-brain barrier protects your brain from infections. However, Chen, who is also an associate professor and vice chair of research in the Division of Neurosurgery at the UCSD School of Medicine, noted, ‘Unfortunately, those same natural defense mechanisms make it difficult to get antibiotics to the brain once an infection has taken hold.’
Nanotechnology is a complementary wellness therapy in which nanoparticles are constructed which can find and treat infections and other damage associated with traumatic brain injuries. Sailor, the UCSD materials chemist who leads the team, commented, ‘Our approach is focused on porous nanoparticles that contain highly effective therapeutics on the inside and targeting molecules on the outside. When injected into the blood stream, we have found that these silicon-based particles can target certain tissues very effectively.’ Because drug-resistant strains mutate and evolve rapidly, researchers must constantly adjust their approach to treatment.
The key to this team’s approach will be Nanocomplexes that contain genetic material known as short interfering RNA, or siRNA, which have been developed by Sangeeta Bhatia’s research group at MIT. Bhatia, the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, said, ‘The function of this type of RNA is that it specifically interferes with processes in a diseased cell. The advantage of RNA therapies are that they can be quickly and easily modified when a new disease target emerges.’
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