Links for Keyword: Regeneration

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Antibiotic provides promise in treatment of spinal cord injuries

Treatment prevents later-stage tissue loss contributing to long-term injury Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) and Children's Hospital Boston (CHB) have found that a commonly prescribed antibiotic could be used to help prevent paralysis and other long-term functional deficits associated with a partial spinal cord injury (SCI). Researchers in the field have known that a significant proportion of paralysis and long-term functional disorders associated with SCI are triggered by post-trauma tissue loss. Administering the antibiotic, minocycline, to rats within the first hour after a paralyzing injury has been shown to reduce this tissue loss and ultimately enable more hind-leg function, the ability to walk with more coordination, better foot posture and stepping, and better support of body weight than untreated controls. The findings are published in the March 2, 2004 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The BWH/CHB researchers found that minocycline reduces later-stage tissue loss by blocking release of a protein known as mitochondrial cytochrome c. Yang D. Teng, MD, PhD, of the joint BWH/CHB neurosurgery program and co-lead author of the study, notes that other experimental agents can prevent later-stage tissue loss, but must be given immediately after or even before SCI to be effective. "The field has badly needed to develop a drug that could be used in a practical manner," said Teng.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System
Link ID: 5039 - Posted: 02.25.2004

Feeling restored after paralysis

Scientists say they have successfully restored feeling to patients paralysed for at least two years. A team from the University of San Paulo in Brazil said 12 out of 30 spinal cord patients responded to electrical stimulation of their paralysed limbs. The researchers harvested stem cells from the patients' blood, and reintroduced them into the artery supplying the area which was damaged. The results raise hopes that paralysed people could one day walk again. Lead researcher Professor Tarciscio Barros said: "Two to six months after treatment, we found that patients were showing signs of responding to tests. "We still hope we may yet see improvements in the other patients too but already this is a real breakthrough." Stem cells - immature "master" cells which have the ability to turn into many different types of tissue - are thought by scientists to a potent source of potential new treatments for many diseases. (C) BBC

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior; Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 4: Development of the Brain; Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System
Link ID: 4548 - Posted: 11.17.2003

Protein linked to brain cell scarring after injury

CHAPEL HILL - A new study links a protein discovered a few years ago at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with formation of scar tissue that occurs after injury to nerve cells in the brain or spinal cord. Such scarring apparently blocks neurons of the central nervous system from recovering after traumatic injury - inhibiting their axon filaments from regenerating and ferrying nerve impulses elsewhere, to other neurons and tissue, including muscle. Loss of nerve cell function and paralysis can result. The findings, published online today (June 4) in the journal Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience, add new knowledge to a long-standing issue in neuroscience: why do nerve cells in the peripheral nervous system grow back after an injury such as a skin cut, but cells in the brain or spinal cord do not.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization; Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 3881 - Posted: 06.04.2003

Superman's toughest battle

Actor Christopher Reeve has confounded medical opinion to fight a determined battle against paralysis - and his efforts are beginning to produce results. Doctors thought it was unlikely that the star of the Superman movies would even survive after he broke his neck in a horse riding accident in May 1995. Against the odds, he pulled through, but his injury left him paralysed from the neck down, unable to breathe without the use of a ventilator and dependent on 24-hour nursing care. Reeve describes the fact that he survived as a "miracle". However, he also admits that he had to battle thoughts of suicide. The chances that he would ever recover movement in his legs were tiny. But with a steely determination and remarkable dedication he has begun to prove this grim prognosis wrong. A BBC documentary 'Christopher Reeve: Hope in Motion' follows the star's progress as he gradually inches towards his goal of regaining some of the independence he so misses. (C) BBC

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System; Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 3426 - Posted: 02.10.2003

Cop regains sight in hyperbaric chamber

BY MICHAEL A.W. OTTEY mottey@herald.com When clouds form and rain comes, and lightning strikes, and thunder roars, fear grows in the heart of Carlos Torres Jr. The Miami-Dade police officer, a resident of Pembroke Pines, was struck by lightning while he worked in his nursery in Southwest Ranches in July. It left him blind. On Friday, Torres announced that after months of blindness he had regained his sight. He credited his recovery to hours spent in an oxygen chamber at the Ocean Hyperbaric Neurologic Center in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. Copyright 2003 Knight Ridder

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 10: Vision: From Eye to Brain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 7: Vision: From Eye to Brain
Link ID: 3215 - Posted: 12.22.2002

Brain preserves ability to 'feel' and 'move' after spinal cord injury in one quadriplegic

St. Louis, -- Brain regions involved in movement and feeling appear to remain relatively healthy and active even years after the body has been paralyzed, according to research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. A team of investigators found that five years after complete paralysis from a severe spinal cord injury, areas of the brain normally responsible for some movements and feelings have maintained those capabilities in one quadriplegic. "The fact that there is stability in the brain despite a lack of input from the body is very good news," says Maurizio Corbetta, M.D., head of stroke and brain injury rehabilitation. "However, longer studies with more patients will have to be conducted to learn more about what this means for recovery after spinal cord injury." Corbetta, who also is associate professor of neurology, of radiology and of anatomy and neurobiology, led the study along with Harold Burton, Ph.D., professor of anatomy and neurobiology, of cell biology and physiology and of radiology. The findings are scheduled to appear online the second week in December and in the Dec. 24 print issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System
Link ID: 3144 - Posted: 12.10.2002

Exercising Toward Repair of the Spinal Cord

By SANDRA BLAKESLEE When Christopher Reeve went on national television last week to announce that he could wiggle his fingers and hips, the news seemed startling. Paralyzed from the neck down after a horseback riding accident in 1995, Mr. Reeve had been told repeatedly that he would never be able to move any part of his body below his shoulders. But scientists who study the brain say Mr. Reeve's recovery is part of a quiet revolution in how intense physical exercise can help restore the brain and spinal cord after serious injury. At academic research centers in the United States, Europe and Japan, paralyzed patients are hanging from harnesses, walking on treadmills and tying down limbs to force the use of paralyzed arms and legs. Some are being fit into robots designed to help move their bodies. Using such techniques, an estimated 500 paraplegics who had limited sensations in their lower bodies are now able to walk for short distances, unassisted or using walkers, scientists say. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization; Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization; Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System
Link ID: 2683 - Posted: 09.22.2002

Actor Regains Some Movement, Doctor Says

By SANDRA BLAKESLEE Christopher Reeve, the actor who was paralyzed in a horseback riding accident in 1995, has regained the ability to wiggle his fingers, move all his joints and sense touch all over his body by tenaciously following a grueling therapy that uses exercise and electricity to activate muscle groups, his doctor says. "He did what everybody thought was not possible," said the doctor, John W. McDonald, an assistant professor of neurology and director of the spinal cord injury program at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, who designed the therapy for Mr. Reeve and described it in an article in the current issue of The Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine. "He had the highest level of injury and no recovery for five years. Now he's improving every day." The treatment is not a panacea, Dr. McDonald said. Mr. Reeve, 49, still must use a wheelchair and a respirator, and there is no way to predict whether he will ever walk or breathe independently. But, the doctor said, his muscles and bones are stronger, he has fewer infections and sensations of spasticity, and his quality of life has greatly improved. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

Paralysed actor can move toes

Actor Christopher Reeve, best known for his Superman films, can now move some fingers and toes after being paralysed in a horseriding accident in 1995. The star can feel a pin prick over most of his body and can distinguish between hot and cold, and sharp and dull sensations. His doctors said the progress could one day lead to a full recovery, something Reeve has always said would happen. The actor, 49, told People magazine, in the US, that he could feel the hugs of his wife, Dana and his three children again. "To be able to feel just the lightest touch is really a gift," he told the magazine. His doctors said Reeve had already made great progress. (C) BBC

Controversy over spine surgery claim

Experimental spine surgery has enabled a paraplegic woman to walk again, a doctor has claimed. However, spinal experts are concerned about the ethics of the procedure, which they view as untested and highly controversial. Dr Giorgio Brunelli, of the Universita di Brescia, Italy, revealed details of the nerve-graft surgery at a conference in California. The woman's spinal cord was severed in a road accident. But Dr Brunelli said that following surgery she has regained limited use of her legs. In a 14-hour surgery performed in July 2000, Dr Brunelli removed a portion of the 28-year-old's sciatic nerve and used it as a graft to connect the undamaged portion of her spine to muscles in her buttocks and thighs. (C) BBC

A Recipe for Motor Neurons

Researchers have taken an important step closer to repairing broken neurons. A team has turned embryonic stem cells into nerve cells and transplanted them into the spinal cords of chicks, where they grew into motor neurons. The results show that given the right signals, stem cells can be turned into neurons of choice. When you wiggle your toes, or move any other muscles, motor nerve cells in your spinal cord send commands to your muscles via long tentacles. These tentacles, called axons, can break when injured or diseased. So far, efforts to cure the resulting paralysis by regrowing the extensions have been unsuccessful in humans and have reduced paralysis in, but not cured, injured rats. Adult neurons are less adaptable than young neurons, however, and researchers have turned to embryonic stem (ES) cells--blank slates that can turn into any cell type in the body. By manipulating the molecules bathing ES cells, they hope to create progenitors that will turn into motor neurons when transplanted. To do this, a team of researchers led by neuroscientist Thomas Jessell at Columbia University created a mouse strain that produced green fluorescent protein (GFP) only in certain motor neurons. They grew mouse embryos until they had 1000 cells. Then they doused them with retinoic acid, a compound that stimulates stem cells to become more like neuron progenitor cells. Next they added a dash of protein called sonic hedgehog, which steers them down the path to becoming spinal cord neurons. The team found that 20% to 30% of the embryonic cells transmogrified into glowing motor neuron progenitor cells, they report in the 9 August issue of Cell. (C) 2002 AAAS

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior; Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 4: Development of the Brain; Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 2468 - Posted: 08.13.2002

Brain can reorganize after traumatic injury

Study shows damaged brain finds new ways to function Toronto, ONT. -- People who have suffered a moderate to severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) can recover some of their memory function by using alternate brain networks, according to a new study in the August 2002 issue of the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. TBI, often sustained in traffic accidents, is one of the most common causes of disability in young adults. People with TBI frequently complain of memory problems that interfere with their daily function and ability to work, yet many eventually recover memory function and return to work or school. The study, led by scientist Brian Levine of The Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, compared brain function in two groups of adults -- six patients who had suffered a moderate to severe TBI four years earlier (with several days of coma in some cases)and made a strong recovery, and 11 healthy adults who matched the TBI group in age and education.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 2408 - Posted: 08.05.2002

UCLA neuroscientists first to show that adult brains turn back developmental clock to repair damage

A new study by UCLA neuroscientists shows for the first time that a unique pattern of cellular activity found in early brain development also triggers repairs to damaged adult brains. The findings, appearing in the July 15 edition of the peer-reviewed Journal of Neuroscience, hold implications for treating brain damage caused by stroke and other disorders. Researchers in the Department of Neurology and Brain Research Institute at UCLA used rat models to show how cells in brains damaged with stroke-like lesions, caused by interruption of blood flow, develop slow synchronous activity. This activity triggers cells to sprout new connections into areas of the brain disconnected by the lesion. "Our research shows for the first time that this activity works to trigger repairs in adult brains," said Dr. Marie-Francoise Chesselet, professor of neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and study co-author. "Previously this activity has been identified as a key component of brain development."

Molecular "Stop Signs" May Hold Secret of Nerve Regeneration

Using brain cells from rats, scientists at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the University of Hamburg have manipulated a molecular "stop sign" so that the injured nerve cells regenerate. While their findings are far from application in people, the prospects for eventually being able to repair spinal cord injury are brighter, they say. "Four thousand years ago, physicians wrote that spinal cord injury was untreatable, and unfortunately it's much the same today," says Ronald L. Schnaar, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology and of neuroscience at Hopkins. "But the basic-science framework for improving this situation is quickly emerging."

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 2255 - Posted: 06.21.2002

Stanford explores new avenue for brain injury, paralysis research

STANFORD, Calif. - The central nervous system, made up of the brain and spinal cord, never forgets a slight. Somehow, nerve cells lose the ability to regenerate: witness actor Christopher Reeve's paralysis after his horse threw him at a jump. To find a cure for such injuries, scientists must understand why nerve cells lose the ability to grow back. They know that these cells - called neurons - stop regenerating because a signal tells them to slow down during development. The problem is, scientists haven't known much about that signal. Now, a team of Stanford University Medical Center researchers have identified the mechanism and some key cells involved in controlling regeneration. It turns out that the signal to slow down doesn't come from the neurons themselves, but from an outside source. The signal's effects appear to be permanent. The findings, published in the June 7 issue of Science, outline what may be a new avenue to explore in the search for brain-damage and paralysis treatments, the researchers say.

Scientists Developing Ways to Enhance Nerve Regeneration

Written by Laszlo Dosa, Voiced by Faith Lapidus Orlando, Florida Scientists already know how to make injured or severed nerve cells, neurons, regenerate and resume carrying messages from the brain to other parts of the body. But, as Johns Hopkins researcher Ronald Schnaar explains, not all nerve cells respond to such treatment. "Many people have heard of people who have had, say, a finger severed and sewn back on. They regain feeling and movement of that finger. That finger is served by motor neurons that actually start in the central nervous system and reach all the way down to your finger," he explained. "So that the end of the neuron can regenerate just fine over several centimeters in your finger. But if you were to cut that same nerve in the central nervous system, it would not regrow at all." Professor Schnarr who led the research on new nerve regeneration techniques said we can best understand the nervous system if we think of the electrical wiring of a house. Insulated copper wires carry electricity to a light bulb or a radio, for example. If the wire is cut, the light goes out and the radio stops playing.

Rat makes a partial recovery following a spinal cord lesion

Scientists at the Netherlands Institute for Brain Research have developed an experimental therapy which enables rats with a spinal cord lesion to partially recover from their paralysis. Up until now not even the slightest degree of recovery was possible. PhD student Bas Blits was part of this team. The method uses a combination of transplantation and gene therapy. For the transplantation, the researchers implanted nerve cells cultured in vitro. The cells originated from the nerves between the ribs where they could be missed. Following the transplantation gene therapy has to further stimulate the growth and recovery of the damaged nerve cells. This is done by means of growth stimulating molecules. These neurotrophic factors are naturally present during, for example, the recovery of nerves following a deep cut in the finger. Normally they are not present in large enough quantities in the spinal cord.

Plugging Up the Injured Spinal Cord

To restore movement and sensation, researchers graft a variety of cells By Douglas Steinberg Courtesy of Eric Schwartz and David Hackney MRI of a rat spinal cord that received a transplant of genetically modified fibroblasts into a lateral funiculus lesion site. After spending the early 1970s studying regeneration in the Xenopus frog tadpole's optic nerve, Paul J. Reier began to ponder how mammalian spinal cord injuries (SCIs) might heal. Eventually, the junior professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine chose to enter an emerging field: fetal cell transplantation into the spinal cord. A colleague called the career move crazy--a judgment that Reier now admits wasn't totally unwarranted. "The spinal cord injury field was clouded by pessimism," he explains. "Everything you saw clinically didn't look very promising, and experimentally there were no indications of anything very spectacular on the horizon." © Copyright 2001, The Scientist, Inc. All rights reserved.

Severed optical nerves can be made to grow again

James Randerson It is being hailed as one of the most significant advances in nerve regeneration in a decade. After severing an optic nerve in rats, neurologists have found a way to reconnect it to the brain so that it once again transmits normal electrical signals. The achievement is a first in mammals, and may hint at ways of reversing some types of blindness in people. Scientists also hope to use a version of the technique to treat people with spinal cord injuries. In many simple creatures, damaged nerves mend themselves. But mammals, with their large brains, have traded this flexibility for stability. With such a complex nervous system, rewiring damaged nerves the wrong way could do more harm than not rewiring at all. So mammals keep a lid on nerve cell growth by producing proteins that inhibit axons--the part of a nerve cell that conducts signals--growing in the scar tissue that forms after injury. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 10: Vision: From Eye to Brain; Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 7: Vision: From Eye to Brain; Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 1107 - Posted: 12.06.2001

The regeneration gap

Newts grow new legs, Hydra new heads. These remarkable creatures may hold clues for researchers developing human cellular therapies. But the connections are only now starting to be made. HELEN PEARSON Take one flatworm, chop into 279 pieces and leave for two weeks. Feed occasionally. The result: 279 perfect new worms. The ability of flatworms, or planarians, to regrow an entire body from a handful of cells seems almost miraculous. Salamanders, starfish, tentacle-waving polyps and zebrafish - many and varied are the organisms that can regenerate new heads, limbs, internal organs or other body parts if the originals are lost or damaged. Unfortunately, people cannot. But over the past few years, researchers studying regenerating creatures have begun to identify the genes, proteins and signalling pathways that underlie these organisms' abilities. This work indicates that the gulf between us and them is not so great. "We have the genes planarians use to regenerate their brain, muscle, their entire head," says Alejandro Sanchez Alvarado of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2001

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 1038 - Posted: 11.26.2001

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