Abstract
The Rosalind Franklin Society (RFS), in partnership with Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers, enthusiastically congratulate our distinguished recipient of the 2023 annual
Luise Schlotterose, Megane Beldjilali-Labro, Gaya Schneider, Ofir Vardi, Kirsten Hattermann, Uzi Even, Esther Shohami, Herman D. Haustein, Yael Leichtmann-Bardoogo, and Ben M. Maoz, “Traumatic Brain Injury in a Well: A Modular Three-Dimensional Printed Tool for Inducing Traumatic Brain Injury In vitro,” Neurotrauma Reports 4, no. 1 (2023): 255–266, https://doi.org/10.1089/neur.2022.0072.
Abstract
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a major health problem that affects millions of persons worldwide every year among all age groups, mainly young children, and elderly persons. It is the leading cause of death for children under the age of 16 and is highly correlated with a variety of neuronal disorders, such as epilepsy, and neurodegenerative disease, such as Alzheimer’s disease or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Over the past few decades, our comprehension of the molecular pathway of TBI has improved, yet despite being a major public health issue, there is currently no U.S. Food and Drug Administration–approved treatment for TBI, and a gap remains between these advances and their application to the clinical treatment of TBI. One of the major hurdles for pushing TBI research forward is the accessibility of TBI models and tools. Most of the TBI models require costume-made, complex, and expensive equipment, which often requires special knowledge to operate. In this study, we present 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. Moreover, we demonstrate that our device can be used on multiple systems and cell types and can induce repetitive TBIs, which is very common in clinical TBI. Further, we demonstrate that our platform can recapitulate the hallmarks of TBI, which include cell death, decrease in neuronal functionality, axonal swelling (for neurons), and increase permeability (for endothelium). In addition, in view of the continued discussion on the need, benefits, and ethics of the use of animals in scientific research, this in vitro, high-throughput platform will make TBI research more accessible to other labs that prefer to avoid the use of animals yet are interested in this field. We believe that this will enable us to push the field forward and facilitate/accelerate the availability of novel treatments.
Biosketch
Dr. Schlotterose studied pharmacy at Kiel University, Germany. After pre-registration training at Bayer AG’s Quality Control Department in Berlin and in a community pharmacy, she started her PhD work at Kiel University’s Institute of Anatomy. Her PhD project was part of a German Research Foundation (DFG)-funded, highly interdisciplinary research group called “Materials for Brain”. During her PhD studies, she also worked as a visiting research fellow to the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Tel Aviv University, Israel, for 4 months. She is currently employed as a postdoctoral scientist at Kiel University with a research focus on in vitro models of glial cells during neuroinflammation and glial scaring. For this work she received the CAU-Start grant from Kiel University. This coming spring, Dr. Schlotterose will start a postdoctoral scientist position within the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics at Oxford University, UK.