Ajay Verma, MD PhD, Associate Professor of Neurology at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, MD, USA is looking at the role of xenon therapy in the treatment of traumatic brain injury.
Dr Verma compares brain injury with dropping a rock in a pool, with a corresponding cascading ripple effect. ‘One of the biggest things in the last ten years has been the understanding that the initial injury is not all. There is a large window of opportunity to come in and do something. We just haven’t had anything good to come in with.
Now we hope to show that xenon can act as one of those agents
that will shut down the cascade of injury.’‘ For a long time we have been working on examining the role of gases as messengers, starting with carbon monoxide back in 1993 and over the last four years with oxygen and how it regulates brain metabolism
and gene expression. What we are hoping to do is look at brain metabolism
and how it can be regulated by general anesthesia. We’re looking to slow down brain metabolism - right after an injury such as a stroke or
brain injury. The plan is to start using general anesthetics as drugs.
’Dr Verma would like to see a time when general anesthetics could be used, for example, after a car accident or sports injury. ‘It’s so easy to administer gases and their action on the brain is so quick that they represent an ideal way to immediately shut down brain metabolism.’ He will be experimenting with xenon by producing an injury in a rat brain, allow it to develop and then administering a brief period of general anesthesia to try and stop the injury cascading.’
Also examining xenon is fellow grantee Dr Martin Bienengraeber,
PhD, Assistant Professor at the Department of Anesthesiology
at the Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA. His project is looking at the mechanisms of cardioprotection by xenon. ‘We are aiming to protect the heart from ischemia by exposing it to xenon before, or immedi- ately after, ischemic attack. We have demonstrated that there are several pathways involved when xenon is introduced in this way. My special interest is with the mitochondria and we will also be looking at how the mitochondria’s ‘energy factory’ functions. This is a specific part of our proposal.’ Dr Bienengraeber has a background in volatile anesthetics and he heard of similar mechanisms being observed with volatile anesthetics as with xenon leading to his decision to research what he describes as such a ‘technical gas.’ |
