An exosomal-transcriptomic biomarker approach in patients with traumatic brain injuty: a pilot study

Introduction and Background: This research proposal is based on the traumatic brain injury patients who will be recruited from the Hamad Trauma center, at HGH. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a broad term that refers to a variety of injuries to the brain with a wide range of etiologies, clinical presentations, and severity levels, and it can have long-term neurobehavioral consequences. TBI is a serious health concern that affects people from all walks of life. Currently employed diagnostic criteria and modalities, such as brain imaging and subjective measures of consciousness such as the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) score, are insufficient to detect the full spectrum of head injuries. It's critical to have a better diagnostic tool for triaging head injuries and predicting outcomes. In the pathobiology of TBI, circulating biomarkers derived from human plasma- derived extracellular vehicles (EVs) are emerging as a tool that may address the many facets of TBI pathology and improve clinical management. In the recent years, there has been a significant increase in interest in the role of EVs in various pathological conditions. Exosomes can be a promising TBI biomarker because they can cross the blood-brain barrier and can be isolated from peripheral fluids like serum, saliva, sweat, and urine. They may thus provide an ideal modality for the study of TBI. Plasma-derived Exosomal biomarkers can be used to assess the risk of developing the progressive disease, track its progression, and predict prognosis following brain injury. With this project, we expect to Identify useful biomarkers which may act as a powerful tool for assessing clinical trial outcomes including TBI diagnosis, establishing TBI severity and assisting physicians in selecting and personalizing treatment options, as well as elucidating the significance of EVs in neurological disease.

Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU)