UBC Faculty of medicine researchers receive more than $5M from U.S. Department of Defense Spinal Cord Injury Research Program

Drs. Brian Kwon and Babak Shadgan, both faculty members in the department of orthopaedics, have been awarded a $3.7 million USD grant to conduct a clinical trial evaluating a novel implantable biosensor based on near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) technology, developed to monitor oxygenation and blood flow status of the injured spinal cord. The sensor will be implanted on the injury site at the time of surgery and provide clinicians with real-time physiological information to optimize hemodynamics management of the injured spinal cord at the acute phase of injury. This “bench-to-bedside” translation of the optical sensor technology has been developed at the International Collaboration on Repair Discoveries (ICORD) and tested in experimental settings for the past 4 years. READ MORE