Confocal Microscope for Imaging of Brain Injury Progression
Abstract
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a prevalent source of disability and neurocognitive impairment in athletes and warfighters. Patients, who suffer mild TBI often do not show symptoms of concussion or neurocognitive impairment immediately after injury. However, eviden,ce of neuronal cell injury happens within hours following mild TBI. Conventional preclinical models of TBI often rely on animal stud,ies. However, these animal models exhibit TBI responses that are confounded by the presence and input of other extracranial cell typ,es. Also, the large sample sizes required for statistical analysis can be cost-prohibitive. As a result, these platforms limit high-,throughput studies aimed at characterizing morphological and biomarker profile changes during TBI experiments. Our 3D neurospheroid,TBI culture model provides a platform for the study of TBI progression in living, engineered, microscale tissues with in-vivo, brain,-like features that can be used to induce multiple injury modalities. As such, our platform can be useful to study molecular mechani,sms (i.e. apoptosis, injury biomarker secretion, neuroinflammation, etc) as well as potential therapeutics to mitigate TBI.Confocal,microscopy is the modality of choice for our outputs, to take full advantage of both (1) the 3D biomimetic nature of the neurosphero,id model, and (2) the versatility of its high-throughput potential. The newly released (May 2021) Nikon confocal system contains the, widest field of view on the market of 25 mm and a total scan size of 8192 x 8192 pixels. Our lab having access to the confocal micr,oscope for precisely timed and longitudinal experiments will optimize our ability to carry out multiple experiments with complex inj,ury modalities and outputs, including our repeat TBI experiments and our TBI biomarker experiments.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Apr 01, 2022
- Source ID
- N000142212366
Entities
People
- Diane Hoffman-Kim
Organizations
- Brown University
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy