New Tulane School of Medicine department will connect neuroscience discoveries to patients faster

A new department at the Tulane School of Medicine is bringing scientists and clinicians together to accelerate promising neuroscience discoveries in the laboratory toward treatments for patients.

The new Department of Translational Neurosciences was created this summer from the Clinical Neuroscience Research Center.  

“The mission of this new department is to strengthen and expand nationally recognized research and educational programs in translational neurosciences at the Tulane University School of Medicine,” said Lee Hamm, senior vice president and dean of the School of Medicine.

The new department is poised for discovery and is set up to identify new neurologic treatments in the laboratory and move them to clinics that treat patients, said Greg Bix, the founding chair of the new department and adjunct professor in both the Department of Microbiology and Immunology and the Department of Neurology.

“We will work closely with our basic research and clinical colleagues in the Tulane Brain Institute, neurology, neurosurgery and beyond, as well as the Tulane Innovation Institute, to drive innovation and application in neurologic care,” said Bix, who is the Vada Odom Reynolds Chair in Stroke Research.

One example of the new department’s work is a multidisciplinary project investigating the impact of pediatric infections on long-term cognition. The project involves faculty from both the Department of Translational Neurosciences and the Department of Microbiology and Immunology.

The new department has also collaborated with the Tulane Center of Sport to expand its work to better understand chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. The disease is caused by long-term, repeated trauma to the head and has been found in several former football players.

With this collaboration, “we have a unique opportunity to understand better who develops neurological disease, why some players remain resilient, and how we can improve early detection and prevention,” Bix said.

There are also plans for interdisciplinary teams to establish an Alzheimer's disease research center, he said.

Bix joined the Tulane School of Medicine in 2019 and is a leading researcher in translational stroke, dementia and neuroinflammation. His work focuses on how blood-vessel diseases contribute to cognitive impairment and dementia and the effects of aging on ischemic stroke.