U.S. Army Combat Casualty Care Research Program Awards Grant to VCURES:

The Department of Defense's United States Army Medical Research and Material Command and its combat casualty care research program has awarded VCURES a four-year $695,000 grant. The grant entitled Characterization of Global and Microvascular Oxygen Transport in a Lower Body Negative Pressure Model of Hemorrhagic Shock , is designed to assist the Army in developing a novel human model of hemorrhagic shock.

Team members include:

Kevin Ward, MD: Principal Investigator: VCURES Associate Director and Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine and Physiology

Ivo Torres Filho, MD, PhD: Co-PI: Director VCURES Clinical Microcirculation Laboratory and Associate Professor of Anesthesiology, Emergency Medicine, and Physiology

Tarynn Witten, PhD: Co-PI: Director VCURES Biocomplexity and Computational Medicine Program and Director of Research for VCU's Center for the Study of Biological Complexity. Associate Professor of Biocomplexity and Emergency Medicine

Hakam Tiba , MD : Senior VCURES Research Associate: Department of Emergency Medicine.

The U.S. Army's renowned Institute of Surgical Research in San Antonio Texas is developing a novel model of hemorrhagic shock that utilizes lower body negative pressure to redistribute blood from the torso to the lower extremities. This is being shown to produce many of the same physiologic affects of real hemorrhagic shock. The model is safe and can be utilized in human volunteers. The advantage of this model is that it allows direct study in humans and avoids many confounding variables such as anesthesia.

VCURES will use its expertise in the clinical monitoring of systemic and microcirculatory oxygen transport to determine if the model produces changes at these levels known to occur in trauma victims. VCURES will also use this data to develop novel computational models of oxygen transport in this setting, which will allow unique insights into the pathophysiology of hemorrhagic shock. The computational portion of the grant will be a collaborative effort between VCURES' program in biocomplexity and computational medicine and the VCU Center for the Study of Biological Complexity ( http://www.vcu.edu/csbc/ ).

Dr. Ward state's “This new model being developed by the Army may represent a tremendous breakthrough in the study of hemorrhagic shock. The VCURES effort will be critical in validating the model as one useful for the study of clinical hemorrhagic shock. The data generated will help strengthen and standardize the lower body negative pressure model and may assist in developing new monitoring techniques”.

The project is a part of VCURES' unique Operation Purple Heart program, which is a dedicated research efforts in combat casualty care ( http://www.vcu.edu/vcures/purpleheart.htm ).

or more information contact Dr. Kevin Ward at krward@vcu.edu