Illuminating the brain: engineering light to monitor brain activity. (360G-Wellcome-104580_Z_14_B)

Perinatal brain injury remains a significant cause of neonatal mortality and is associated with long-term neurological disabilities including cognitive impairment, mental retardation and accounts for 15 to 28% of children with cerebral palsy. There is an urgent clinical need to detect as early as possible those neonates at most risk and who may benefit from adjunct therapies and/or redirection of clinical care for effective rehabilitation. Early detection and assessment of brain neurological sta tus and outcome requires sensitive, robust and easy to measure biomarkers. The aims of my fellowship are to: (1) develop new methods for assessing neonatal brain injury and deliver early bedside biomarkers of atypical cognitive and neurological development; (2) inform and access efficacy of targeted interventions and clinical management for long-term neurological outcome in brain injured neonates through a clinical evaluation program. For several years now I have been developing instrumentati on and methodology that can non-invasively measure brain tissue oxygenation, haemodynamics and uniquely assess mitochondrial oxygenation through measurement of the oxidation status of cytochrome-c-oxidase (oxCCO). We have shown recently that, utilising our novel multimodal measurements that combine optics and magnetic resonance spectroscopy, in the neonatal animal model, the oxCCO measurement is a good indicator of the biochemical status of the brain and is directly related to recovery and outco me following brain hypoxic-ischaemia. This Fellowship will enable me to build upon my previous achievements and embark on an ambitious program of research to clinical evaluate and establish the brain optical measurement of oxCCO as a neuromonitoring biomarker.