By: Ada Chong
December 2023
Laura Blackwell is a pediatric Neuropsychologist and a principal investigator in the Pediatric Neurotrauma Lab, and her research focuses on examining different types of biological biomarkers that could help provide information about management and predictors of outcomes in pediatric traumatic brain injury. Dr. Blackwell and her team want to better understand how aspects of a child’s biological system as well as their premorbid psychological, behavioral, and environmental history, influence their recovery after an injury. Her research includes the whole spectrum of traumatic brain injuries, including concussion as well as more severe injuries.
Dr. Blackwell focuses on different acute and chronic markers of injury, including an interest in an inflammatory marker called osteopontin. She is examining whether elevations in these inflammatory markers, possibly reflective of the secondary cascades of traumatic brain injury, lead to worse outcomes. Dr. Blackwell and her team received an NIH R21 to study osteopontin from a diagnostic and prognostic standpoint. They finished this study last year and recently published on the initial findings. As a follow up to this study, the team is embarking on a very large biorepository project where they plan to collect several biospecimens (blood, tissue, and CSF) from children and adolescents who have had both general and head trauma. The goal is to build a biorepository that can be used to investigate current and novel markers that will ultimately help direct treatment, management and provide information about prognosis following trauma.
In addition to biospecimens, the lab collects a great deal of information from patient medical records as well as parent reports on patient’s behavioral and emotional functioning. The team also collects neurocognitive data that includes information on patient attention, executive functioning, memory, and learning. Ultimately, Dr. Blackwell says that the research needs to be tied back to clinical implications. She also hopes that it will help inform policy changes – if there are healthcare disparities, she wants to advocate for patients.
Dr. Blackwell says that Dr. Andrew Reisner, a pediatric Neurosurgeon and co-principal investigator of the Pediatric Neurotrauma Lab, and herself are first and foremost clinicians. They are inspired to do this research because of what they see day to day with their patients and hope that it can help their patients in the future. She says, “I have seen two patients with very similar traumatic brain injuries, but one patient discharged from the hospital in a disorder of consciousness while the other discharged and was walking, talking, and able to go back to school and home. We have a poor understanding of why kids’ outcomes are so discrepant. So for me, it is important to learn how and why these kids have very different trajectories. We want to be better at understanding outcomes so that it can lead to improved management.”