Research Underway to Develop Drug to Help TBI Victims

A chemistry professor at the University of Notre Dame is working on research intended to create a drug that could be given to a patient immediately after a traumatic brain injury to slow or reduce injury to the brain.  In December, Professor Mayland Chang received a $100,000 grant from NFL Charities (a charitable foundation of National Football League owners) to design and develop a drug for the treatment of TBIs.  When a brain suffers an injury, it causes biochemical changes that lead to tissue damage and the death of some brain cells.  Professor Chang and a colleague at the University of Missouri have been working on developing and defining inhibitors to block those chemical changes, potentially saving brain cells that otherwise would die.  They have found that some compounds will rescue as much as 60% of the brain that was destined to die.  Chang is currently testing a compound she developed on mice.  But human testing is still several years away.