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FORT DETRICK, Md. – The U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command is making connections with stakeholders from the business, academic and nonprofit communities involved in brain health research to identify innovative ways to diagnose and treat combat-related traumatic brain injury.
“We are closing the military relevant gaps for treating brain injury on the battlefield, from the initial injury point through acute hospitalization, but there are still needs that we are trying to meet,” explained Dr. James B. Phillips, manager of the Neurotrauma Portfolio at MRDC’s Combat Casualty Care Research Program, during a recent educational webinar co-sponsored by the American Brain Coalition and the Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium.
Phillips explained that early and fast triage and diagnosis of TBI at or near the point of injury is one of the critical overarching needs that CCCRP is currently working to address.
“If you read and see what's going on in Ukraine, you can see what future battlefields could look like where you just can't evacuate anybody when you want to,” said Phillips. “We need to initiate treatment earlier at the point of injury. Especially with trauma, the earlier you can intervene, the better off they'll be.”
A recent study by the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center found that nearly 414,000 Service Members sustained a TBI between 2000 and 2019. Over 80% of mild TBI cases experienced by Service Members were the result of exposure to high pressure shock waves caused by explosions, called blast overpressure. TBIs damage neurons in the brain, as well as connective tissues and fibers, which in mild cases can take weeks to heal and in severe cases leave lasting damage that impairs cognitive ability.
The goal of CCCRP’s Neurotrauma Portfolio is to identify and close military-relevant gaps in diagnosing and treating combat-related TBI from the point of injury through hospitalization. These gaps include treatments for moderate to severe TBI that are less invasive than current methods; technologies that are highly portable, rugged and require little or no refrigeration; the ability to not only detect cerebral hemorrhages but also to identify their locations, sizes and changes; tools for monitoring intracranial pressure noninvasively; physiological markers of injury such as changes in blood oxygen and glucose levels; and objective assessments of a patient’s cognitive ability.
Phillips explained that medical professionals operating in far-forward areas often operate within constraints that make timely diagnosis, treatment and evacuation of combat related TBI challenging.
“We operate in very austere clinics,” explained Phillips. “When we're deployed, we don't have a lot of the resources that we're privileged to have in the developed world because of the weight and the fact that we need to be mobile. We operate in cramped spaces where there's low lighting and in extreme environments from very cold weather to very hot, wet weather.”
Finding new and creative ways to solve challenging problems like these is why MRDC partnered with MTEC, a nonprofit international consortium of over 600 academic institutions, small and large businesses, nonprofits and other organizations in the biomedical technology sector – most of which are small businesses that have not previously worked with the federal government. MTEC’s mission is to promote the development and delivery of new therapeutics, devices, biologics, diagnostics, clinical practice guidelines, digital health systems and other innovations that improve the health of Service Members and civilians.
MTEC accomplishes this through a special type of contractual vehicle called Other Transaction Agreement, or OTA. OTAs help government agencies develop solutions faster and ensure they are more closely aligned to the agencies’ needs.
“This is the first time in MRDC’s history that we’ve had a partnership like this,” explains Sara Langdon, the MTEC program manager with MRDC’s Office of the Principal Assistant for Acquisition. “MRDC wanted a consortium that could find nontraditional partners and forward leaning companies and bring them to MRDC. We also wanted a mechanism that supported teaming arrangements, both pre- and post-award.”
Langdon says that the partnership arrangement with MTEC also allows the organization to engage with foundations and venture capital firms to provide additional expertise and funding to support the development of medical products. MRDC has funded over 300 prototyping projects through MTEC since the nonprofit’s founding nine years ago, according to Langdon. To date, MTEC has issued $171 million in awards related to brain health research, including TBI detection and treatment, post-traumatic stress disorder management and behavioral health, wellness and resilience.
“Through the MTEC OTA, essentially anyone can now do business and offer innovation to the government,” said Dr. Lauren Palestrini, MTEC’s chief science officer, during the webinar. “The consortium style ecosystem fosters collaboration between the government and consortium members and allows for more open communication and partnerships that advance prototype development toward military needs for innovators.”
In addition to MRDC, the Naval Medical Research Center’s Naval Advanced Medical Development program, the Office of Naval Research, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, the Defense Health Agency, Uniformed Services University, the National Guard Bureau and the Air Force Research Laboratory also participate in MTEC. Having other funding sponsors helps increase interagency collaboration, share costs and reduce overhead expenses.
“We're all working together, which really aligns with the ultimate goal of bringing the various R&D military medical branches under the DHA umbrella,” says Langdon. “The support that MTEC provides makes it possible for us to get critically needed products into the hands of our Warfighters, where they save lives.”
| Date Taken: | 07.15.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 07.15.2024 13:33 |
| Story ID: | 476226 |
| Location: | FORT DETRICK, MARYLAND, US |
| Web Views: | 232 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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