Developing Successful Neuroprotective Treatments for TBI: Translational Approaches, Novel Directions, Opportunities and Challenges

About this Research Topic

Background

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a global and growing public health problem and remains one of the most important causes of morbidity and mortality particularly among children and young adults. Complete functional recovery is not usually accomplished in most patients surviving after moderate to severe TBI, and persistent symptoms may occur even following mild TBI.

At the present time, no effective treatments are available in clinical practice and the development of new therapeutic strategies is a major goal of research. However, given the remarkable list of failed experiences and negative or inconclusive trials, TBI drug development is considered to be a difficult and risky therapeutic category within the drug development arena.

The goal of this Research Topic on neuroprotection for TBI is to promote research and identification of the next generation of treatments for TBI. We aim to trigger stimulating discussions on emerging approaches and bring together insightful articles on recent advances and the most innovative therapeutic strategies for TBI, including stem cells and nanotherapeutics.

Importantly, novel biomarker tests to guide patient management and molecularly targeted therapies hold tremendous potential for diagnosis and treatment of TBI and the ability to realize a truly personalized care and precision medicine practice. They would also advance the scientific understanding of the pathophysiology of TBI and enhance the interpretation of the patient population heterogeneity.

In this Research Topic, we also aim to provide an infrastructure for presenting results from the latest experimental and clinical research across the board of injury severity, while identifying gaps and challenges (e.g poor pharmacokinetics and inappropriate biodistribution, technical and biological transferability issues of the animal model itself) which can hamper translation of preclinical models into successful clinical trials.

Furthermore, it is crucial to explore lessons learned from effective therapeutic strategies developed for other CNS diseases that could facilitate drug development or be adopted for clinical application in TBI.

Keywords: Neuroprotection, traumatic brain injury, pharmacology, translational research, drug development

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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