Enzyme Found To Help Formation of New Axons 88
Greg George writes "Researchers at Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology have announced that they have found an enzyme that helps nerves to grow in areas damaged after trauma. In typical injuries, scar tissue forms around the damage point and the body removes the tissue so that new muscle and nerves can regrow in the damaged area. In spinal cord injuries, scar tissue forms and that is the end of the story. Special chemicals form that stop the body's cells from moving in and removing the scar tissue and then allowing the healing process to start. Studies have been done attempting to bypass the scar tissue, but none has been successful in large-scale repair of injured muscle and nerves in the spinal column. The researchers for this paper have found that sugar proteins near the damage point stop the healing and that an enzyme can be used to break down these proteins so that the body can then begin repairs. The enzyme, chondroitinase ABC (chABC), is sensitive to heat, and breaks down quickly in a human body. To stop that process they found that by replacing the ABC with another sugar called trehalose, they were able to stabilize the ABC, allowing it to break down scar tissue over a large area. The gel formed by these sugars is stable for up to six weeks in the bodies of test animals, allowing the research team to inject growth factors that increased the healing, to the point that the animals started to use their limbs again. The work is still in the beginning stages." Reuters reporting adds a few more details: "...many other approaches will be needed to repair spinal cord injuries in humans, including controlling inflammation, which can cause additional injury, stimulating nerve fiber growth, and getting nerves to reconnect and communicate with the brain."
How do we fasttrack this research? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sounds like this is somethign we should be dumping more "Stimulus Money" into so that we can cure people with traumatic nerve damage, this would save countless millions or billions as people confined to wheelchairs would not need so much fiscal support compared to non paralyzed folks.
If they need human volunteers for trials I don't think they would have any trouble finding any....
Ok, but why...? (Score:3, Interesting)
"In spinal cord injuries, scar tissue forms and that is the end of the story. Special chemicals form that stop the body's cells from moving in and removing the scar tissue and then allowing the healing process to start."
I'm assuming this is one of those "the body does this beacuse its better in normal circumstances, but in the case of severe trauma it's not so good" kind of things... but can anyone clarify why the body's normal healing process is blocked for spinal injuries?
Re:Ok, but why...? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's an evolutionary advantage for the entire herd when a single injured member is incapacitated, thereby allowing predators to focus on the injured member instead of healthy members of the herd.
So by basically erasing all hope for recovery for the spinal injury victim, Evolution has enabled the non-injured humans a means of escape from lions, tigers, and bears.
Since we live in modern society, it's uncommon to see this kind of pursuit. However, evolutionarily speaking, the movement to cities and civilization is a pretty recent phenomenon. Until that fateful event, humans were preyed upon by many other wild animals.
Re:You can't. (Score:3, Interesting)
you'd probably just be buying the original researchers PostDocs a new car apiece
Actually, that sounds like a pretty good way to encourage more people to study science. Then we'll at least change culture today and have a bunch more scientists 20 years from now.
Re:Evolutionary Advantage? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, it completely divorces the immune system from the central nervous system. Capillaries go into the CNS, but you don't have things like white blood cells in there. This prevents a few things, normal body cells from destroying CNS cells for example. An immune cell destroying nerve cells would be very bad.