Traumatic brain injuries have toxic effects that take weeks after the initial impact – an antioxidant material reduces this damage in mice

Traumatic brain injury Is a principal cause for Death and disability on the planet. Blunt force trauma for the brain, often from a nasty fall or a traffic accident, makes the death of deaths Over 61,000 Americans Every 12 months. Over 80,000 will develop long -term disability.

While a big a part of the physical brain damage occurs immediately – known as the first stage of injuries – additional brain damage may end up from the destructive chemical processes that arise within the minutes to weeks after initial impact. In contrast to the first stage of injuries Secondary level Could possibly be prevented by aligning the molecules that drive damage.

I’m a Material scientistAnd my colleagues and I work to design treatments as a way to neutralize the damage to a secondary traumatic brain injury and reduce neurodegeneration. We have designed A New material That could Goals and neutralize For mice that improve their cognitive recovery and offer potential recent treatment for humans.

Biochemical Fallout

The primary stage of traumatic brain injury can Damage and even destroy the blood-brain barrier – An interface that protects the brain by restricting what it could actually enter.

The disturbance of this barrier triggers damaged neurons or the immune system to release certain chemicals that result in destructive biochemical processes. A process called Excitotoxicity occurs when too many calcium ions are approved in neurons, which prompts enzymes which can be fragmentation of DNA and damage cells, which results in death. Another process, NeuroinflammationResults from the activation of cells which can be often called microglia and may trigger inflammation in damaged areas of the brain.

These secondary phase processes also create harmful molecules which can be called Reactive oxygen species. These molecules that include free radicals, modify and deform essential proteins in cells chemically and deform them unusable. You can even break DNA strands, which results in potentially harmful genetic mutations.

If you stay deactivated, damage Oxidative stress Can have devastating consequences for long -term health and neurocognitive rest. Researchers have associated the biochemical changes and by -products AlzheimerPresent Parkinson's And Whenamongst other things.

Connections Called antioxidants Can aim at this oxidative stress and improve long -term neurocognitive rest through chemical interaction with reactive oxygen species in a way that may neutralize its harmful properties.

Find the best antioxidant

My team and I studied whether an antioxidant called A Thiol group Could help treat traumatic brain injuries.

Thiol groups are chemical compounds that contain a sulfur atom that’s sure to a hydrogen atom. Sulfur atoms are much larger than hydrogen atoms, which suggests that the sulfur atom in a thiol has a powerful pull on a single electron of a hydrogen atom. This weakens the bond between hydrogen and its electron Just hand over his electron to other atoms.

As a result, thiols interact With many alternative reactive oxygen species, including those that damage the DNA. We not only chosen Thiols for his or her antioxic properties, but additionally for his or her ability to bind and neutralize others as brain as brain Lipid peroxidation products. These neurotoxic compounds are formed as by -products when reactive oxygen species damage fats within the body.

To put these thiols into the body, now we have installed them in materials Called polymers. These are long chains of organic molecules from individual units called monomers. So that the monomers can connect with one another, a lonely electron – or free radical – initiates a bond with a monomer, causing a series response. Imagine this process to change off plenty of domino stones: The thrust of your hand (the free radical radical on this case) hits a domino (the monomer) after which incorporates the remainder of the domino stones to a line (the polymer ) to form.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwrvj9rz2qq

Since Thiole can inhibit this polymerization process, we needed to do a monomer with a so -called Protection of the group This may be chemically removed after polymerization to turn out to be our thiole. Since A-lipoic acidA standard addition present in pharmacies incorporates such a protective Thiol group. We used it to make our monomer.

We then made a series of those monomers RAFTA controlled process through which polymers may be designed in such a way that the body is left by the urine. For this purpose, a water -soluble mit monoma may be added to the chain in order that the polymer can dissolve within the bloodstream.

Finally, we treated the polymers to remove the protective group and produce thiololymers that were ready for further tests.

Tests on TBI

Next we tested how well our thiololymers have neutralized reactive oxygen species.

First we called a technology UV-visible spectrophotometryWhich lights up a laser in a cell sample that incorporates each our polymer and our brain damage molecules. If there may be reactive oxygen species within the sample, the sunshine is minimally absorbed. But if our polymer neutralizes these connections, the sunshine is severely absorbed. Through these studies we found that our Thiolpolymer neutralized reactive oxygen species Like hydrogen peroxide by as much as 50%and other neurotoxic molecules Like acrolein by as much as 100%, which protects neurons from damage.

We carried out additional tests by having suspended fluorescence proteins free of charge radicals and have found that proteins that weren’t treated with our thiololymers were destroyed. Proteins treated proceed to be fluorescentThis indicates that our thiol polymer radically neutralized the free and guarded the protein.

After all, we injected the Thiolpolymers into mice right into a traumatic brain injury. Brain scans showed that our polymer not only successfully focused on the damaged area of ​​the brain, but additionally prepared immediate protection of further injuries. Our Thiolpolymer was capable of reduce reactive oxygen species in injured mice to only 3% via the conventional values ​​present in unhurt mice. Untreated mice with a traumatic brain injury had a rise of 45%in comparison with unhurt mice.

Future work on thiololymers

Our results suggest that these thiololymers can function potential treatment for the secondary stage of a traumatic brain injury. Further tests will help to find out whether this material may reduce the chance of long -term disability.

We are currently developing A Cheap process To incorporate the thiole with tiny nanoparticles. This will help increase the variety of thiols in the fabric and at the identical time improve the power to flow into within the bloodstream for longer protection.

Many additional studies on animals are required to substantiate the effectiveness of our material within the treatment of traumatic brain injuries. If our results are still positive, we wish to check the effectiveness of our material in people in clinical studies. We hope that these treatments could improve the long -term results for victims of automotive accidents, falls and even sports -related injuries to the brain.