There is a rapid increase in the prevalence of traumatic brain injury (TBI) with long-term neurological consequences. While this is the number 1 cause of death for kids under the age of 16, and effect more than 1.6 million people annual in the USA alone, there are limited tools that allow to study TBI, as in vivo models suffer from interspecies differences, complex, and raise animal welfare concerns, and the in vitro require custom-made tools which are expensive and not commercially available.
We offer a modular, three-dimensional printed TBI induction device, which can be used on any standard tissue culture platform. This device recapitulates the hallmarks of TBI, which include cell death, a decrease in neuronal functionality, axonal swelling (for neurons) and increased permeability (for endothelium). This in vitro platform will enable every lab that engaged in studying TBI, to do so in a very simple way.

UNMET NEED
Currently there are no commercially available tools that mimic and emulate TBI in vitro. This limits the ability to study TBI which is effecting more than 55 million people, and to this day, there is no FDA approved treatment.

OUR SOLUTION
Our technology is a device for modeling TBI in cultured human cells (2). This device is a modular, three-dimensional printed TBI induction device, which induces, by the pulse of a pressure shock, a TBI-like injury on any standard cell-culture tool. This device can be used on multiple systems and cell types and can induce repetitive TBIs, which is very common in clinical TBI.

APPLICATIONS

A device for fast and simple testing of TBI drug candidates in relevant tissue culture models.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Provisional application was submitted in January 2022: Device for Inducing Traumatic Brain injury in Tissue Cultures.

REFERENCES
1. GBD 2016 Traumatic Brain Injury and Spinal Cord Injury Collaborators, Lancet Neurol. 2019;18(1):56.
2. Schlotterose et al., Neurotrauma reports. 2023, 4.1