Ava Puccio, RN, PhD

Dr. Puccio’s research has focused on improving outcomes in traumatic brain injury patients, with clinical venues of controlled normothermia, mechanisms of brain oxygenations and exploring genetic variances and expression on outcome. She and was awarded a K99/R00 NINR grant in 2014, entitled “Transcriptomics in Traumatic Brain Injury: Relationship to Brain Oxygenation and Outcomes.”

With over 25 years of clinical trial design, involvement and management, several traumatic brain and spine injury research studies have been completed and are ongoing. Many cutting-edge biomarker and high definition fiber tracking imaging and additional observational research studies are being conducted. Dr. Puccio is very involved in the Transforming Research and Clinical Knowledge in TBI (TRACK-TBI) consortium and was awarded a Department of Defense grant as PI of the Biospecimen Repository which collects, catalogues and stores cerebrospinal fluid, blood, serum DNA and RNA samples obtained from mild, moderate and severe TBI patients at 17 clinical sites. 

Analyses from these samples has provided additional validation to the recent FDA-approval of the use of two biomarkers, glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) and ubiquitin C-terminal hydrolase L1 (UCH-L1) obtained within 12 hours of a suspected TBI in determining the need for a brain CT scan, and is the central PI of the biorepository for a FDA-pivotal trial with Abbott Laboratories which results are pending. The success of this biorepository has also spring-boarded opportunities to acquire additional ongoing grant support through the DoD as the biorepository for the biomarkers in the “Brain Oxygenation Optimization Study Trial” (Bio-BOOST), as well as the TRACK-TBI Geriatric Initiative (NIH funded) to further define the elderly TBI cohort and TRACK Precision Medicine, an initiative for personalized care in TBI.