Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is hard to detect, and is sometimes called the "invisible injury." Ron Hayes and Nancy Denslow, both scientists at the McKnight Brain Institute and the founders of Banyan Biomarkers, have developed a blood-based test that will make TBI detection and treatment easier and faster.   One potential application is to detect brain injury in newborn infants. *This episode was originally released  on April 1, 2020.* 

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade, the podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida. The museum is named after James Robert Cade who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We'll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them. We'll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work, and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Richard Miles: 0:41

This morning, we have Dr. Ron Hayes , one of the co-founders of Banyan Biomarkers with us. Welcome, Ron .

Ron Hayes: 0:46

Thank you.

Richard Miles: 0:47

So Ron , before we start talking about Banyan Biomarkers and what a biomarker is and what it does, tell us a little bit about yourself. Where were you from? Where'd you grow up and how did you decide to become a scientist?

Ron Hayes: 0:58

I grew up in Richmond, Virginia in the fifties at the time, it was a, quite a conservative time , uh , somewhat isolated, really a classic vision of the old Seth. My undergraduate major at the University of Richmond was classical languages. And , uh, then I did some graduate work in philosophy. So it's surprising sometimes to find myself , uh , here today. But if we want to elaborate at some point, I think it's been a benefit for me to have a liberal education.

Richard Miles: 1:30

Tell us a little bit about what you're like as a kid where you were very curious, sort of interested in everything. And when did you sort of know you wanted to gravitate towards a scientific field

Ron Hayes: 1:39

As a kid, I didn't know. I read voraciously wasn't , uh , much of a sports person. I, although I ultimately ended up playing competitive tennis later in life, but at that time I was really quite focused on reading

Richard Miles: 1:57

Really? Okay. Did you have a teacher that stood out or were either of your parents? So what did they do, were they scientist engineers, doctors?

Ron Hayes: 2:07

No, I was the first person in my family to go to college. They, they encouraged reading. Uh, they , uh, certainly liked to see me do it, but , uh, as I reflect, it was sort of a self-taught environment. And I read anything put in front of me.

Richard Miles: 2:25

Tell us a little bit now , uh, let's talk about biomarkers , uh, for folks who don't know what that means, what is a biomarker? How does it work?

Ron Hayes: 2:34

It's an indicator of , uh, the organic state of an individual or an animal that provides in a medical situation information on the health or the disease state of the person. And a biomarker can be a variety of different things. It could be information from the blood such as we use in, in, in our, or it could be an image of the body. It could be a recording of bodily activity, such as heart rate, but any of these things colle