Research to Better Understand Cellular Mechanisms of Brain Injury

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) impacts millions of people each year and is typically characterized by two phases of injury. These are the primary injury, which includes the direct effects of the injury and the secondary injury, which includes everything that happens in the days to years following.

Secondary processes are responsible for worsening that occurs after the primary injury, and presents a potential target for brain injury treatments. Thus, the primary goal of our research is to better understand cellular mechanisms of secondary brain injury to find better ways to treat TBI patients’ long term. We are exploring how TBIs might affect different populations, including why some individuals have greater resilience to injury.

The visual system is particularly susceptible to injury (up to 75% of all TBI patients will develop visual deficits or symptoms). Thus, we examine mechanisms of injury by looking to the eye, optic nerve, and visual regions of the brain.

In particular, we are interested in trauma to the optic nerves, which is referred to as traumatic optic neuropathy (TON). We have learned that two cell stress pathways are involved in retinal cell loss after TBI – endoplasmic reticulum stress and oxidative stress. We have also found that the immune system plays a significant role in the progress of optic nerve injury. Ongoing research in the lab is trying to understand how these processes coordinate neuronal fate and whether modulating these pathways improves outcomes after head trauma.