The search for effective TBI treatments

Honorary Consultant Neurosurgeon Aminul Ahmed discusses his research in traumatic brain injury (TBI), and a UK-wide collaboration to try to improve patient outcomes. 

Please introduce yourself and explain your role within King’s Health Partners? 

I’m a Senior Lecturer within King's College London and an Honorary Consultant Neurosurgeon at King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (NHS FT). So, I have two roles across King’s Health Partners Neurosciences, one is my clinical role as a neurosurgeon in a busy London major trauma centre, and my second role as a researcher with my own laboratory, which is based at the Guy's campus of the university. 

Please can you tell us about your work regarding TBI? 

I’ve been doing research in TBI for over a decade now, starting when I was a neurosurgical trainee. 

In neurosurgery we see a lot of patients who come in with TBI, and we’re the first port of call in terms of managing their care in the acute setting. 

One of the things which strikes me is that despite a lot of advances in science and medicine over the last decade or even longer, something like TBI still doesn't have any treatment that improves outcomes. 

I have been working in this area for many years to see if there's anything that could be developed as a treatment to improve the quality of life in these patients. 

Please tell us more about the recent TBI grant and how it will help your work? 

One of the things about TBI is that research to try and improve outcomes needs to be coordinated. We're very good in the UK at coordinating this research, and there have been some key international trials run in the UK for TBI. 

On the back of that, the government and the Medical Research Council has really pushed to try and bring some of this expertise together, and funded the setup of a data platform and biomarker resource to try and pull key centres together. 

It’s being led by Cambridge University, but King's College London/King's College Hospital NHS FT is one of six centres. It is a platform to show that we can deliver some of the research needed to improve outcomes. 

Along with that there's a resource and data platform, so the details of anybody who has a traumatic brain injury can be uploaded. In this era of AI and machine learning, it gives an opportunity for large data to be analysed. 

It's very much in the early stages - money has only recently been awarded - but it allows several centres to work together to try and build this platform. My understanding is that there will be further calls for funding for some of the other areas, such as experimental research in TBI, which King's College London/King's College Hospital NHS FT is particularly strong at. 

Why is it important that we learn more about TBI and the best treatments? 

As I mentioned earlier, the thing with TBI is that there really isn't a treatment at the moment that improves outcome. We’re very good at managing certain aspects in the intensive care unit to try and control certain parameters, but actually there aren’t any effective drug treatments that will help the patients.  

This ties in partly with the kind of basic sciences research that I do, looking at strategies to try and increase protection of the brain after injury, and the one thing that is really lacking is an effective treatment. I think the overall aim of having this coordinated effort throughout the UK is a step towards that.  

The initial plan is for six centres to be part of a coordinated effort, but as it becomes more established then the data from patients from more and more centres can be inputted, and that hopefully is the start of trying to look for effective therapies and work collaboratively. 

You can follow Aminul Ahmed on Twitter @NeuroSxAminul, and read his key publications on his King’s College London webpage here. 

To learn more about the work of KHP Neurosciences, visit the webpages here.