Danaher announced Thursday that it has launched a partnership with Johns Hopkins University aimed at developing new traumatic brain injury (TBI) diagnostics, with an added focus on diagnosing mild TBI.
For the Danaher Beacon for Brain Injury Diagnostics collaboration, researchers at Johns Hopkins University will utilize technology from Danaher subsidiary Beckman Coulter Diagnostics to "potentially establish correlations between a new biomarker panel and clinical outcomes," Danaher said in a statement.
The Beacon for Brain Injury Diagnostics is the sixth collaboration in the Danaher Beacons program, which funds product-driven scientific research with academic investigators.
The Beacon builds on recent neurological biomarker research and Beckman Coulter's next-generation immunoassay detection technology. If effective, the approach could potentially be used in the diagnosis of other types of brain injury. Furthermore, it could possibly be adapted for the diagnosis of other neurodegenerative disorders.
The research will be led by Jessica Gill, PhD, MSN, professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, and Dr. Richard Rothman, PhD, professor of emergency medicine at Johns Hopkins Medicine.
Mild TBI in particular requires the development of better diagnostics; unlike moderate to severe TBI, it often does not correlate with abnormalities on CT. Healthcare providers need to be able to diagnose mild TBI early to identify patients at higher risk of developing incapacitating symptoms.
"Our latest in vitro diagnostics innovations are improving the detection of specific biomarkers found in blood when brain cells are damaged," Julie Sawyer Montgomery, vice president and group executive of Danaher Diagnostics, said. "We are thrilled to partner with Johns Hopkins with the goal of leveraging these solutions to develop tests for earlier and more precise diagnosis of mild TBI, which could ultimately lead to improved treatment outcomes and faster recovery for patients.”
