Two Cleveland medical research hotshots are teaming up in the lucrative quest to prevent traumatic brain, neck and spine injuries and create new strategies for concussion recovery, diagnosis and prevention.
The Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve University will form the Cleveland Traumatic Neuromechanics Consortium, the institutions announced Friday, pairing the Clinic’s talent in medical research, imaging tools and patient care with Case’s engineering expertise, especially in the area of neurology. It will focus on collision injuries from sports, military and automobile accidents.
The Cleveland Clinic was ranked the sixth best hospital in the country for neurology and neurosurgery by U.S. News last year, and it already has a lot brewing in the area of traumatic brain injury. Researchers are developing a biomarker blood test and an iPad2 app that are aimed at identifying concussions in football players, and a mouthguard that could measure the impact of blows to the head among athletes.
The partnership could help the Clinic gain ground in this area on other institutions known for their neurology programs like Johns Hopkins, Massachusetts General Hospital and Mayo Clinic, which announced in 2010 it would work with Intel Corp. to develop computer simulations for assessing the risk of head injuries.
Northeast Ohio also has a variety of companies working on technology for neurological injuries, including high-profile company Athersys, which is developing a regenerative medicine technique called MultiStem for treatment of traumatic brain injury. Cleveland-based Life Core Technologies is also developing a medical device to cool the brain of patients who sustain brain trauma.
