4 replies to this topic

[Apparelyzed]

Nanofibres reconnect nerves

Mice paralysed by spinal injuries have been able to walk again thanks to a treatment developed by scientists in the US. The therapy uses proteins that self-assemble into nanofibres at the site of the injury, encouraging nerves to regrow.

'Spinal cord injury is rather like cutting a telephone cable,' says John Kessler, leader of the team at Northwestern University, Illinois. 'It's not about replacing cells; it's about reconnecting the wires properly.' But in the spinal cord, although severed nerve fibres are capable of repairing themselves, glial cells that surround the damaged nerves form a scar that blocks the two ends from reconnecting.

The new treatment involves injecting specially-designed peptides with long hydrophobic tails directly into the site of the injury.

'When these peptides come into contact with an aqueous solution - such as fluids in the body - the charges in the tails line up and point inwards, forming radial spokes and producing long cylindrical nanofibres,' Kessler explains. 'These nanofibres act as a scaffold that serves a dual purpose, both limiting the amount of glial scarring that occurs and stimulating the nerves to grow out and reconnect.'

The team used their therapy to treat mice with crushed spines 24 hours after they had received the injury. Six weeks later the mice had regained the ability to control their hind legs and walk, showing that both motor and sensory nerve fibres had healed. But, Kessler adds, there is still a lot of work to be done before the treatment can enter human clinical trials.

'I think this is a pretty significant development,' says Michael Beattie, a specialist in central nervous system injury and repair at the University of California. 'The team have combined clever polymer chemistry with some good outcome measures to achieve impressive results.'

'Right now there is a lot of excitement about using stem cells or progenitor cells to treat brain or spinal cord injury,' he adds. 'These could be combined with this kind of treatment and I should expect to see human trials in years rather than decades.'

Kessler's team are also confident that this technology will not be limited to injuries of the nervous system. There is a huge potential for applying this technique to other health problems, the researchers say, such as stimulating regrowth of blood vessels or regenerating organs with stem cells.



A) Schematic picture showing the structure of the nanofibres; The assembled scaffold of nanofibres

References

V Tysseling-Mattiace et al, J. Neurosci., 2008. DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.0143-08.2008

[Tim13]

It's times like these I wish I was a mouse.

...mmmm, peptides.

[PsychoSimon]

stuff like this though, relies on there actually being "space" for these implants to be made. I wonder how many SCI's are out there where the bone has been pushed into the space for the spinal cord. Mine certainly is that way, so I can't see how that sort of stuff would help my situation? I can't be the only one in this predicament?

It's one thing being able to do it in a controlled environment but perhaps it may be a bit harder to do it in practise?

Not being negative, this certainly is a huge step forard if it works right, just may be a bit hard to implement?

[Tim13]

PsychoSimon, on Apr 12 2008, 11:10 AM, said:

stuff like this though, relies on there actually being "space" for these implants to be made. I wonder how many SCI's are out there where the bone has been pushed into the space for the spinal cord. Mine certainly is that way, so I can't see how that sort of stuff would help my situation? I can't be the only one in this predicament?

It's one thing being able to do it in a controlled environment but perhaps it may be a bit harder to do it in practise?

Not being negative, this certainly is a huge step forard if it works right, just may be a bit hard to implement?

Mine's still connected, it just doesn't let much get through the bruised area so IF something like this could be made to actually work, it would be great but that would suck if they couldn't cure everybody. I've read things like this for years-there have been a lot of experiments that have led to recovery in mice but they always seem to falter on the way to us humans. After so many years of disappointment, it's hard to get too excited anymore yet every time i read of some new breakthrough, i can't help but think in the back of my mind "maybe this is the one".

Ever think about the poor guy whose job it is to break all those little mice? That just can't be a very rewarding career.

[Texaswheelz]

their are tons of things that have been reported to have mice walking again. the experimental surgery i had done back in '93 reportedly had mice and rabbits walking again after years of testing. I haven't seen any reports of people walking after it though. The Dr. that did it only got to do it on 25 people in the US, but last I looked him up, he was doing it in other countries still...