Researchers have built a low-cost tabletop device that generates pressure waves to study traumatic brain injury without using animals.
The apparatus uses PVC pipe, aluminium and ice lolly sticks to simulate blast impacts that can cause neurodegeneration.
Four University of Rhode Island researchers developed and tested the kit, pairing molecular biologists with mechanical engineers to create the model.
Associate professor Claudia Fallini studies cellular and molecular mechanisms behind neurodegenerative diseases including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
Using stem cell cultures, Fallini works “in a dish” with postdoctoral fellow Riccardo Sirtori.
The team aims to build a foundation for studying traumatic brain injury (TBI) in vitro – experiments done outside a living organism – as a risk factor for neurodegenerative disease.
TBI affects more than 65 million people globally each year. A single moderate-to-severe TBI can quadruple dementia risk. Military personnel, veterans and older adults face higher risk and long-term health impacts.
Fallini had been seeking ways to model TBI in vitro without animals, but published methods were complex or required expensive tools.
She and Sirtori teamed up with Arun Shukla and PhD candidate Akash Pandey in URI’s College of Engineering.
Shukla, an expert in blast mitigation who consults with the US Navy, and Pandey, who develops materials that withstand underwater blasts, took on the challenge.
Pandey progressed the project in summer 2024. The design, realisation and calibration of the shock-loading device took about one month. Shukla’s lab runs shock-loading daily, but its main rig was too large for biology.
Pandey built a miniaturised 3m-long, water-filled shock tube and benchtop simulator for the TBI study.
Sirtori designed the study and ran the biological experiments.
“It was interesting to see the type of research they are doing on blast impact in Dr Shukla’s lab,” Fallini said.
“A very different angle on the same important issue.”
The blast simulator delivers reproducible pressure waves to 3D organoids.
The portable device generates high-pressure pulses that mimic the load from blast-injury TBI.
In the prototype, organoids were exposed to a blast wave for under 1 millisecond – about 100 times faster than a blink.
That brief exposure caused severe damage to several cellular structures, which could lead to functional decline and neurodegeneration.
The modelled injury is similar to a blast from an IED or fired weapon.
The device has already yielded insight, including that cells in deeper parts of the brain’s outer layer are more susceptible to blast than upper-layer neurons.
With these results, Fallini and Sirtori can now better assess DNA damage after traumatic brain injury.
“This is a valuable, accessible tool to advance research in this area,” Fallini said.
