QR Pharma is a five-year-old start-up company based in Berwyn, but the young firm has been able to connect with well-known people and groups as it seeks funding to make drugs to treat Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. In 2012, QR Pharma got $468,000 from the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research to explore a compound called Posiphen as a potential treatment for Parkinson's. This grant is for work that will be led by Robert Nussbaum of the University of California, San Francisco, and Jack T. Rogers, an associate professor of psychiatry at the genetics and aging research unit of Massachusetts General Hospital. QR Pharma announced Tuesday that it received $3 million from the Army to study Posiphen as a treatment for traumatic brain injury. This grant is to study the medication in mice in two different trials, and will be conducted in conjunction with the University of California, Los Angeles. The UCLA doctors involved are Marie-Francoise Chesselet, chairwoman of the neurobiology department at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and David Hovda, who has been honored by the Army for his work in developing ways to treat TBI. The Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center tracks service … Continue reading →

As an attorney representing car accident victims with traumatic brain injury, I often tell people that many brain injuries, including concussions, will heal and that many people can definitely go on to lead normal, productive lives. But Some cant. Unfortunately, theres an unlucky percentage of people with brain injuries and concussions whose symptoms dont resolve and who dont get better. This creates tremendous problems for them functioning in society. Closely connected with this is the problem of how many of these people with concussion injuries are treated by many doctors unfamiliar with TBI. Ive previously written about the societal cost of traumatic brain injury when TBI and concussion are not properly diagnosed. The key difference between an injury to the brain, and an injury to the body is that brain injury is a process, not an event. Dr. Brent Masel makes this point quite clearly in his excellent article on traumatic brain injury. In fact, brain injury symptoms can often, get worse, intensify, change and evolve over time into new symptoms for the unlucky person with a brain injury or concussion. A doctor quoted in a recent article on American Medical News: More brain injury awareness needed to curb concussions, … Continue reading →

If all goes as planned, a brain scan will soon become as routine for many University of New Mexico athletes as an annual physical checkup. UNM and the nonprofit organization Mind Research Network on Wednesday announced a concussion-assessment project called Brain Safe that will regularly look inside the brains of more than 200 Lobos with magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI. The athletes will receive MRIs at the beginning of every season and after any serious sport-related injuries. The program is already under way, with initial scans taken this fall of some football players, female volleyball players, and male and female soccer and basketball players. The goal is to learn more about the long-term effects of brain injuries suffered by athletes in contact sports by comparing images taken over a period of time and eventually minimizing the impact of concussions. Our top concern is the safety of our athletes, UNM athletic director Paul Krebs said. This is one more tool for our team doctors to use to make sure that when we return a student-athlete to play, we are making that decision based on the very best medical information available. The sometimes deadly long-term effects of concussions, particularly repeat concussions, has … Continue reading →