Traumatic brain injury (TBI) affects up to 60 million people worldwide. Most of the cases are luckily mild but even mild TBIs can cause long-term cognitive and memory problems when having them repeatedly. This can even lead to dementia or CTE that is early-onset dementia with various mental problems. At the moment, TBI symptoms can be relieved but there is no therapy that could stop the TBI-induced damages to progress as neurodegenerative disease.
Our recent publication in the Experimental Neurology shows that when a novel PREP ligand, HUP-46, is given to mice after mild TBI, modelling a normal concussion in humans, it can completely prevent memory deficit 3-months post-TBI. The mechanism was related to reduced neuroinflammation and cellular senescence in the TBI-damaged brain area. In general, this is very promising for the PREP ligands but warrants further studies.