Traumatic brain injuries are far more common than many realize. Globally, more than 65 million people suffer such trauma each year,
University of Rhode Island researchers say.
In the Ocean State alone, more than 12,000 residents will sustain a traumatic brain injury by the end of 2025, according to the
Brain Injury Association of Rhode Island.
And for many, the consequences do not end with the initial injury. Survivors often face long-term risks, including cognitive decline, dementia and other neurodegenerative disorders.
At URI, researchers led by Claudia Fallini and Riccardo Sirtori are working to change how those long-term effects are studied and understood.
“Traumatic brain injury is often an invisible wound,” said Fallini, an associate professor at URI’s College of the Environment and Life Sciences. “There may be no outward signs of damage, but significant changes are happening at the cellular level.”
Fallini’s work focuses on the cellular and molecular mechanisms leading to neurodegenerative diseases such as myotrophic lateral sclerosis, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. But Fallini and Sirtori, a postdoctoral fellow, aim to strengthen the ability of researchers to conduct laboratory studies of traumatic brain injury, a risk factor for neurodegenerative diseases. In turn, they hope to identify areas for therapeutic intervention.
For decades, labs studying head trauma relied heavily on animal models, a method that, while valuable, carries limitations in cost, complexity and relevance to human biology, Fallini said.
Looking for a way to study brain injuries more directly in human cells, Fallini, Sirtori and their team worked with URI engineers Arun Shukla and Akash Pandey to build a small, easy-to-use “tabletop blast device” that can simulate traumatic injury from blasts in a lab.
Work on the project began in the summer of 2024. Fallini and Sirtori’s knowledge in cell biology, combined with Pandey and Shukla’s expertise in underwater blasts, led to the development of that prototype that the team believes will accelerate the study of traumatic brain injuries.
“Until now, studies were limited to rats or mice, and there wasn’t an entry-level device for working with human cells in the lab,” Fallini said. “Now, we’ve built one.”
In the device, organoids – miniature lab-grown brain models made from reprogrammed stem cells – can be exposed to a blast wave for less than a millisecond, enough to cause severe damage to several cellular structures, similar to a blast, or pressure wave due to schrapnel or being thrown back from an explosive or fired weapon. Researchers can study how that damage could lead to neurodegeneration.
There’s a lot riding on the research.
According to a 2023 data brief from the
R.I. Department of Health, traumatic brain injury remains among the top five causes of injury-related emergency department visits in the state. Other studies have shown that even mild brain injuries can lead to lasting cognitive, functional or psychiatric problems within seven years, whether from falls, car crashes, sports or work injuries.
“These aren’t just distant national statistics,” Fallini said. “This is happening here, in our communities – and unless we understand what’s going on at the cellular level, we’re flying blind on long-term impacts.”
The device itself is deceptively modest, built from PVC pipe, aluminum and popsicle sticks.
According to Fallini, this low-cost, reproducible model offers a compelling new platform to explore what happens inside the brain long after the initial injury, from DNA damage to neuron vulnerability.
At the moment, Fallini, Sirtori and their team, which consists of two graduate students and four undergraduates, are mainly using the new device to deliver reproducible pressure waves to 3D organoids to simulate the impact of military blasts. A study was recently published in the journal Cell Reports Methods, and the work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health and Office of Naval Research.
The idea is to eventually apply that knowledge to all forms of traumatic brain injuries.
“Our hope is that understanding the mechanisms from blast injuries – like those experienced in military settings – can also inform how we think about concussions from car accidents or sports injuries,” Fallini said.
Research conducted with the device already indicates that deep-layer cortical neurons are more susceptible to blast exposure than upper-layer neurons. With those results, Fallini and Sirtori will now be able to better assess for DNA damage after traumatic brain injury.
Eventually, research could help identify biomarkers and new therapeutic targets, Fallini said. The device cannot be reproduced with a 3D printer just yet, but Fallini said the plan is to get the device to that point.
“We’re a long way from that – this is the early foundation of the work,” she said. “Building this device allows us to ask important questions about how neurons respond to blast waves. That’s critical for us in understanding long-term degeneration.”
