UTHealth Houston awarded nearly $13M in grants to study treatments for traumatic brain injury
UTHealth Houston researcher Charles S. Cox Jr. is studying new ways to treat traumatic brain injury. (Photo by UTHealth Houston)
Nearly $13 million in federal grant funds to study treatments for traumatic brain injury, which kills an average of 190 people and hospitalizes another 600 in the U.S. every day, has been awarded to UTHealth Houston by the Department of Defense’s Office of Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP).
The funding marks a positive step forward for patients suffering from the medical condition, said Charles S. Cox Jr., MD, the George and Cynthia Mitchell Distinguished Chair in Neurosciences and the Glassell Family Distinguished Chair in the Department of Pediatric Surgery with McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston, and a member of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Houston Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.
“There aren’t any effective treatments for patients with traumatic brain injury – there’s no drug you can take or operation you can have,” said Cox, lead investigator of the grants and professor of pediatric surgery with McGovern Medical School. “These grants represent one of the more promising steps toward developing these types of trials for finding new treatments.”
A four-year, $7.7 million grant will fund four research projects that aim to address the challenges of treating the hemorrhagic shock-induced exacerbation of traumatic brain injury. Hemorrhagic shock occurs when severe blood loss leads to inadequate oxygen delivery at the cellular level.
The Focused Program Award will be executed within the Center for Translational Injury Research (CeTIR) in the Department of Surgery at McGovern Medical School. Erin Fox, PhD, assistant director of CeTIR, leads the Program Core.