Alicia HallAbout the Lab
Millions of people a year suffer a traumatic brain or spinal cord injury (TBI or SCI); and in the blink of an eye, their lives may be changed forever. The current clinical repertoire for treating CNS injury is extremely limited. In fact, there are no pharmacological interventions to treat TBI and only one drug with questionable efficacy for use in SCI. Most previous research in CNS injury has focused on neuroprotection, and has discounted the role of glial cells in injury pathology. The central hypothesis of our research is that understanding of the complex interaction of glial and neuronal cells in the pathophysiology of traumatic CNS injury will lead to novel, effective therapeutic interventions.
Research Overview
On-going projects include:
- Estrogens, phytoestrogens, and selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs) as potential protective agents in SCI.
- Evaluation of fusion proteins for delivery of anti-apoptotic proteins in SCI.
- Autophagy as a potential novel target in traumatic brain injury.
- Mechanisms of glial cell death in traumatic brain and spinal cord injury.
- Developing an animal model of blast traumatic brain injury.
Student Involvement
Multiple projects are ongoing in the laboratory with several opportunities for medical residents, medical or graduate students, or undergraduate students to train in laboratory research, and I am happy to discuss research prospects at any time. We model traumatic CNS injury with both in vivo and in vitro systems.
For TBI, we use a fluid percussion injury which produces an acceleration/deceleration brain injury in rats and mice and is characterized by long term memory deficits. To model traumatic spinal cord injury, we use an aneurysm clip compression model or an impactor contusion model in rats and mice. Both models produce an injury pathophysiology that closely mimics human spinal cord injury including histological damage, loss of function at/below the level of the lesion, and development of post-SCI pain syndromes. In vitro, we use a mechanical injury model that replicates the tensile strain applied to tissue in a CNS injury. We use primary cultures from either brain or spinal cord and live cell ratiometeric imaging to assess cellular responses to injury and efficacy of potential therapeutic agents.