VCOM View Magazine Vol. 13 | No. 1

Research VCOM Research Collaboration with Virginia Tech Earns NIH Funding by Amy Ostroth G unnar Brolinson, DO, VCOM’s vice president for research, is the principal investigator on a research project that has thinking about whether the cOMM techniques would have the same positive impact on brains that had suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI).

recently been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The grant is $2.17 million over five years and the project is a collaboration with Pamela VandeVord, PhD, who heads up the Traumatic Nerve Technologies (TNT) Lab and Jennifer Munson, PhD, in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics (BEAM) at Virginia Tech. As a clinician, Dr. Brolinson is particularly interested in how diseases and conditions affect the human brain and how osteopathic techniques can provide treatments. About a decade ago, Dr. Brolinson collaborated with Blaise Costa, MPharm, PhD, and Hope Tobey, DO, to develop a model to study the impact of cranial osteopathic manipulative medicine (cOMM) on Alzheimer’s on rats. They discovered that the rats that received cOMM had improved mood, memory and lower anxiety. The internally funded pilot study was so successful that it won a grant from the American Osteopathic Association (AOA) and National Institutes of Health (NIH). It also got Dr. Brolinson

Like all osteopathic physicians, Dr. Brolinson has seen firsthand the positive result of OMM to serve as a non-invasive and non-pharmaceutical treatment for a wide variety of conditions. Cranial OMM has been performed for years, but Dr. Brolinson says that the neurobiological mechanisms of why it works aren’t well understood. Studying those mechanisms could go a long way toward helping people suffering from TBI because it could lead to new treatments. “Traumatic brain injury is a huge problem, not just in this country, but worldwide,” says Dr. Brolinson. “And there is no real treatment for it. There isn’t medication for concussion, just rest and gradual resumption of activity. A novel, non-invasive, gentle OMM technique is potentially revolutionary.” Dr. Brolinson reached out to Pam VandeVord, who studies the complex mechanisms of injury to the brain. Together, they applied for and received intramural funding from VCOM and the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science (ICTAS), an investment institute that advances Virginia Tech

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