Page 105 - Men’s Health - USA (December 2019)
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depression didn’t last very long. The signature
battlefield injuries in soldiers returning home
from Iraq and Afghanistan were, from the
beginning, concussions and TBIs of all kinds.
Soon the Department of Defense was channel-
ing research dollars to the nation’s neurology
departments and public-health institutions.
Then, in 2005, the neuropathologist Bennet
Omalu, M.D., published the results of an
investigation that began with an autopsy of the
deceased Pittsburgh Steeler Mike Webster.
Webster’s brain, Dr. Omalu found, was plagued
with tau proteins, a defining characteristic of
chronic traumatic encephalopathy, CTE, the
progressive degenerative brain disease that
many (but not all) scientists believe results
from repeated blows to the head.
Around the time of Dr. Omalu’s discovery,
VanLandingham was doing his postdoctoral
research at Emory University, and he knew a
little about concussions. As a junior at Florida
High in Tallahassee in 1991, he was the star
quarterback. He could throw a spiral 70 yards
and run the 40 in 4.5 seconds. Recruiters
from many college programs were courting
him, including the hometown Florida State
University Seminoles. Then came a series of
injuries—a broken sternum, shattered bones
in his right (throwing) hand, and, yes, multiple
concussions—that effectively ended his foot-
ball career. After a stint at Division II Valdosta
State, in Georgia, stuck on the fourth string, he
moved on from the sport and transferred home
to Florida State, where he majored in biology.
At around 10:00 P.M. on August 5, 1995,
VanLandingham stepped out of a bar in
Gainesville, Florida, and took a sucker punch.
The fist hit his jaw; his head hit the curb; three
TBIs, to animals, euthanized them within hours, blood vessels burst inside his head. The result was a near-death experience.
and then examined their brains under an electron A day later, in the hospital, a hematoma swelled against his cranium. He re-
microscope. Time after time, in the brains of animal ceived a drug, called Decadron, that was in human clinical trials—one of the
after animal, just after an injury, he detected no therapies, post-Povlishock, that ultimately failed to prove itself effective in
anatomical change at all. A kind of lag existed, as thousands of other TBI patients. But in VanLandingham, Decadron worked.
short as a few minutes, as long as a few hours, before The pressure normalized; the swelling subsided. “It saved my life,” he says.
the damage from the injury could be observed. This Both stories are now integral parts of the Prevacus narrative: The jock
suggested a window of opportunity. If you acted fast turned geek. Personal experience with brain trauma leads to a scientific ob-
enough, maybe you could interrupt the cascade of session with finding a cure for TBI. But, VanLandingham tells me, “I didn’t
neural damage that would eventually set in. Maybe get involved in this because I had a dang brain injury. It’s a sexy story. But I
you could intervene. love neuroscience; I’m fascinated by the science of the stuff.”
Povlishock’s findings unleashed a surge of research worked with brain-injured children for three years. In 2000, VanLanding-
After he recovered, he graduated from physical-therapy school and
zeal as scientists sought pharmacological interven-
Prop styling: Elizabeth Press for Judy Casey went through human trials in the 1990s and early neuroscience at Florida State. In 2004, he began his postdoctoral research
ham left his job as a physical therapist and started pursuing a doctorate in
tions for brain injuries—more than 30 drug candidates
2000s. In medical circles, their track record remains
at Emory under a renowned neurologist named Donald Stein, Ph.D., whose
notorious, a cautionary tale of the scientific method.
work focused on the role of a steroid hormone called progesterone, which
As James Kelly, M.D., a neurologist and Prevacus advi-
is crucial to the growth of brain cells. Stein had discovered that rats given
brain injuries while their progesterone levels were high recovered from
sor, told me, “Every single one of them failed.”
those injuries almost entirely, and he spent decades trying to determine
After these high-profile disappointments, re-
whether progesterone could reduce deadly swelling in the human brain.
search into brain-injury treatments quieted. But the
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