ORLANDO, Fla., April 8 Researchers at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine have identified a set of compounds that appear to overcome an important barrier to regenerating damaged nerves. Their findings could lead to new treatments for spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis and other neurological conditions.
Targeting a newly discovered mechanism that inhibits the growth of damaged nerves, the researchers found that these compounds caused dissected rat nerves to regenerate under controlled laboratory conditions. Findings were described today at the 223rd national meeting of the American Chemical Society, the worlds largest scientific society.
The results add to a growing body of evidence that repairing spinal cord injury once thought impossible may one day occur, says Ronald L. Schnaar, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Pharmacology at the university, located in Baltimore, Md., and lead investigator in the study.
We are getting at the mechanisms that underlie one of the problems in nerve regrowth, but there are others, says Schnaar. Theres no one answer. There is no magic formula for spinal cord repair. Animal studies testing the nerve-regenerating chemicals began recently, he adds.
Nerves consist of axons, long extensions that carry electrical signals. Axons are wrapped by an insulation called myelin, which is essential for normal electrical conduction. When nerve cells are damaged, as in spinal cord injury, myelin sends signals that stop the axons from regenerating.
Schnaar and his colleagues found that molecules called MAG (myelin associated glycoprotein) on the myelin send inhibitory signals to complementary molecules called gangliosides on the surface of nerve cell axons. While the MAG-ganglioside interactions are normally stable, MAG binds to and clusters the gangliosides together during nerve injury. It is this clustering of the gangliosides on the nerve cell surface that is thought to inhibit nerve growth, the
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8-Apr-2002