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Enzyme Found To Help Formation of New Axons
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."
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is a great breakthrough and it provides a new understanding and all that. But fundamentally these kind of enzymes and stuff coax the body into healing itself and so their effectiveness is quite limited. Better to go with bio-interfaced electronics. I once saw a documentary where this guy was almost totally burnt in a volcano. The scientists were able to replace all the lost limbs with mechanical, cornea and trachea with mechanical components, a black helmet and a black cape and he was almost as good as new. Cool thing was, though he was modded so heavily, he still had enough mitachloreans and retained almost all the Force he had to begin with. Amazing. I tell you.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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.
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.
Not exactly... Its more evolutionary advantageous to the predator that it eats the weakest members of a herd group rather than having to fight the strongest or all of them at once.
As a weakened or injured member does not actually promote or demote the passing on of genes of other members of the herd as predators aren't as able or willing to catch the healthy ones anyways for the risk reward offer.
Ergo, the predator is the one that passes on its genes and techniques to its offspring because it is more likely to survive that way where the heard isn't simply evolved to sacrifice its members.
For example, Elephants will defend their young, injured, elderly, and even corpses from predators and scavengers even though they could spend resources elsewhere. That is more or less an evolved "denial of resources" to its natural predators which in turn makes less of them.
As far as why animals can't regenerate nerve endings, it has to do more or less that most animals that are attacked and injured don't live long enough anyways after the fact to pass on their genes because of persistence of the predator or infection.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Elephants will defend their young, injured, elderly, and even corpses from predators and scavengers
They must taste really good. If I tasted really good, I wouldn't want anybody finding out either.
Oh shit—
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
If you threw more money at it, you'd probably just be buying the original researchers PostDocs a new car apiece, and maybe funding a Phd or two. If you want more scientists today, start by changing culture 20 years ago.
Bull shit.
There are plenty of projects that would yield good results out there, and people to do them, but the money is lacking, so said projects get put on the backburner or scaled down. There may be a point at which dumping more money on research will just be wasted, but we are nowhere close to that point. I look at progenitor cells that eventually make up the spinal cord, we use microscopes that cost a lot of money per hour. Really limits the experiments I can do. Extra money would mean I could look at those cells with different markers, under different conditions. Every time I run one of those experiments, I learn more than I was expecting to about how an embryo makes it's spinal cord. Some of those lessons may be useful to treating diseases of the spinal cord or how to repair injured spinal cords.
To be fair though, some stimulus money has been given out, with some unusual strings attached. And also to be fair, putting "stimulus" money into basic research doesn't seem like a very good way to stimulate the economy in the short term. It's a good long-term investment that does need more money, but stimulus, no. Bottom line though, research could definitely use more money, we're far from saturation, and it would definitely be a better investment than giving it to some fucking bank CEO.
This is just not true. Many researchers at universities are having to cut back severally both in personnel and equipment. They are also are being turned down for tenure which encourages them leaving for the privet sector which does more short-term research. While some stimulus money did go to NIH which immediately approved a bunch of grants, the times have been lean for more than 2 years for researchers. All this did was at best bring many labs back to a functional level, not up to maximum research capacity.
As for the PostDoc cars comment, grad students generally get a stipend of around $22-24K and PostDocs make more but still generally under $45K. And the grants don't boost their stipend, which is a preset amount. Rather, it goes into grant money which is monitored and expenses must be justified. So no, it would go directly into research.
Yes, throwing money at a problem wont necessarily solve it faster, but in the case of many labs it would in fact allow for faster progress.
Disclaimer: I work at a university in a biology lab as a research technician.
Here's the actual research paper being cited:
Lee H, McKeon RJ, Bellamkonda RV. Sustained delivery of thermostabilized chABC enhances axonal sprouting and functional recovery after spina chord injury. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 2009. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0905437106.
The summary is slightly incorrect in saying that this group discovered that the chondroitinase enzyme can aid in recovery after spinal cord injury (this has been known for a while, see Bradbury et al. (2002) Nature 416:636–640, whom the authors cite). The authors contribution is to engineer a version of the enzyme that is more stable and works better than the natural version of the enzyme. Because the enzyme is more stable than the natural enzyme, the authors can implant a hydrogel at the site of injury that slowly releases the enzyme over the course of two weeks. The authors show that this sustained delivery improves neuron regrowth and the locomotor function of the injured animals compared to just a single dose of the natural enzyme (which degrades relatively quickly after injection).
It'll be hard to get another celebrity to put their weight behind this kind of research
You are incorrect.
I spoke recently with Doctor Charlotte Smith of the Spinal Cord Injury Recovery Center at Brackenridge Hospital in Austin, Texas, who has seen regrowth of spinal nerve cells in patients undergoing umbilical cord stem cell treatment combined with computer-controlled direct stimulation of detached nerves.
Her research continues to attract funding, but it began from a rehabilitation center significantly funded by former and current professional football players. Consider someone like Kevin Everett, who, after 15 minutes as a quadriplegic ended his football career, has devoted his time and effort toward raising money for spinal cord research.
While the brutality of professional football injuries can be tragic, it does instill in many players a need to campaign for a cure. These are the celebrities that step up and put their weight behind the research.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.