Brain injury is often misunderstood as damage to neurons alone. The reality is far more complex.

In this episode of the Good Medicine Podcast, Dr. David Bearss sits down with Dr. Donna Cross to discuss her journey into building a company focused on treating brain-related diseases and the science behind her work.

Dr. Cross shares how a personal connection to Alzheimer’s through a donor to her lab reinforced her commitment to advancing this field and pushed her to take her work beyond academia.

The conversation also explores how brain injury affects multiple systems at once, including the vasculature, the blood-brain barrier, and inflammatory pathways, and why understanding this complexity is critical for developing effective therapies.

Finally, they discuss a broader shift in drug development toward mechanism-based platforms, where therapies are designed to target underlying biological processes rather than a single disease.

Topics covered include:

• The real impact of brain injury beyond neurons• The connection between brain injury and neurodegenerative disease• The shift toward mechanism-based drug development

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