Cummings Lab: Brain Injury Research for Safer Combat Sports

About the Cummings Lab

Our lab at UC Irvine's Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center is launching a groundbreaking project born not from a traditional grant proposal or a scientist’s curiosity alone, but from direct conversations with mixed martial arts fighters and contact sports athletes who have made it clear that their lived experiences hold insights that science cannot uncover on its own. In the summer of 2024, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) funded a small conference on concussions and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) at UC Irvine. What emerged was a shared commitment to design collaborative research that reflects the realities of combat sports, making brain research more inclusive, accessible and responsive to the communities it’s meant to serve.

At the heart of this collaboration is a question raised by fighters themselves: Do practices like severe dehydration during weight cutting affect the severity of brain injuries sustained in training and competition? Despite being common in combat sports and even being implicated in the deaths of multiple athletes, weight cutting has been largely overlooked in research. Ringside physicians, fighters and trainers have all voiced concern about the risks, but actionable data is missing. Together, we are working to change that.

The Cummings Lab has over 20 years of experience using advanced models of repeated brain impacts to reveal how these injuries alter the brain’s structure and function. Applying these models to real‑world weight‑cutting conditions will allow our team to test whether dehydration increases the severity of brain injury.

Our Mission

To accomplish this, we are conducting an anonymous survey of professional MMA fighters to document real-world weight-cutting practices. Their input will guide the design of experiments that replicate the conditions fighters face when preparing for competition, ensuring the research reflects real life rather than laboratory assumptions. We are also currently training one of our fighter collaborators and former UFC Champion, Miesha Tate, to join us in the lab and participate as a researcher on our team, meaning that this is not research done for fighters, but research done WITH fighters. Pairing this collaborative approach with the established techniques on traumatic brain injury (TBI) research from the Cummings Lab will allow us to directly determine if brain injury severity is influenced by common weight-cutting practices.

Equally important is how the findings will be shared with the communities who need the information. When the time comes to publish our results, we will again turn to our athlete collaborators to generate a lay audience breakdown of our findings, designed to be clear and understandable to the fighting community. Furthermore, Rose Gracie, current president of the Brazilian Confederation of Mixed Martial Arts (CBMMAD) and member of the legendary Gracie family, has partnered with us to translate this document into both English and Portuguese, ensuring that the findings from our work can be put directly into the hands of athletes, coaches, and communities in both America and Brazil. Our goal is to ensure that the knowledge gained from this project will empower fighters themselves to advocate for safer practices while potentially directly informing weigh-in policy discussions in Brazil and the U.S.

Join Us

Your support directly fuels every part of this collaborative project. In addition to covering essential research costs and scientific personnel at UC Irvine, your contribution helps maintain the specialized equipment that keeps our experiments running and ensures our fighter collaborators can fully participate in the work. Because Tate lives in Nevada and balances her involvement with us alongside raising her family and her UFC career, we are setting aside stipend support to make travel to California feasible for vital participation time in the lab. We also plan to support Tate's travel to present our findings at a scientific conference later this year, showcasing the impact of this fighter scientist partnership on a national stage.

Your support also allows us to bring the science back to the communities who need it most. We hope to host outreach events locally and in Las Vegas to share results directly with fighters where they live and train. Additionally, we will be working closely with Rose Gracie to create educational materials that translate complex scientific concepts into clear, practical guidance for athletes and coaches. Once the study is complete, funds will cover publication fees and support the production of lay audience versions of the manuscript in multiple languages, ensuring the findings are accessible and understandable worldwide. Finally, we will provide regular newsletter style updates so donors can follow our progress in real time.

This project exemplifies what can happen when scientists and athletes meet as equals, listen to one another, and build bridges across disciplines. It is a model of community-driven science that is rigorous in its methods and rooted in respect for the lived experience. By supporting this work through UC Irvine, you are not only funding an important study, but you are also helping redefine how research is done, making it more ethical, inclusive and impactful. Together, we can generate the data needed to protect fighters, inform policy, and inspire a new era of collaboration. Whether you can give $5 or $500, your support makes this project possible.

The UC Irvine Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center will house this study,           providing the specialized facilities and expertise needed to investigate how weight cutting may influence brain injury.

Want to Learn More or Contribute in Other Ways?

Contact Jonathan Hasselmann at jhasselm@uci.edu for more information.