39th Society for Neuroscience
11.12.2009The 39th Society for Neuroscience annual meeting took place from the 17th to the 21st of October in Chicago (Illinois, USA) at the “McCormick Place”.
Through lectures, symposia, posters and workshops 40.000 scientists and clinicians experienced innovative neuroscience research. Out of the 16.525 research projects (covering all the neuroscience disciplines) only 498 had a focus on spinal cord injury.
Several Wings for Life projects were presented during the meeting and additionally to those, six projects (not funded by Wings for Life) were particularly interesting.
Dr. L. Gan from the Center for neuroscience in Edmonton (Canada) was presenting the first permanent human implantation of neural prosthesis. Currently existing neural prosthesis are either external, technologically simple, non-invasive and relatively inexpensive, but they often have inadequate selectivity, activating non-targeted muscles and skin sensory nerves that can cause discomfort or pain. Selectivity is improved with implanted neural prosthesis, but these systems are often expensive and invasive. Dr. Gan developed a system that consists of implanted leads that “capture” some of the current flowing between a pair of surface electrodes and route it to the target nerve. The terminal end of a lead is implanted under the skin and the other end is secured on the target nerve. One patient was successfully implanted and implants were still functional at the time of the report, 11 months after implantation.
Dr. D.L. Schonberg (together with Prof. P.G. Popovich and Prof. D.M. McTigue) from the Ohio State Univiversity (USA) reported that the compound Ferritin is capable of promoting oligodendrocyte progenitor cell proliferation in the central nervous system. Oligodendrocytes form the myelin and one of the consequences of spinal cord injury is the death of these cells, an event which is also called demyelination. Ferritin can stimulate the regeneration of oligodendrocyte progenitor cells and could be a new interesting therapeutic treatment. However this should be used with care since the team found that high Ferritin doses were toxic for the nervous system.
Dr. F. Boato from the Medical University of Charité in Berlin (Germany) showed that treatment with a molecule called C3bot154-182 derived from the botulin toxin (Clostridium botulinum C3 protein) improves functional recovery after spinal cord injury by enhancing axonal growth and preventing muscle denervation. This last feature, which was proved for in vivo models was the most interesting because shown for the first time.
Dr. C.P. Bowes from the Cleveland Clinic (USA) confirmed that the Chondroitinase ABC treatment (used to dissolve the extracellular matrix) promotes new growth of surviving axons after unilateral dorsal column injury in the non-human primate (six squirrel monkeys). This work was supported by the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation.
Prof. H.W. Müller, from the Heinrich-Heine University of Duesseldorf (Germany) which is currently funded by Wings for Life presented a different project showing for the first time that age does not have an influence on axonal regeneration after spinal cord injury. Since the average age of patients at the time of spinal cord injury is increasing together with the percentage of new patients older than 60 years, it was important to know if older subjects could have a lower capacity to regenerate their neurons, as previously thought. Prof. Müller showed that not only the neurons can still regenerate, but they even do it better in elderly subjects.
The last work was led by the Prof. W. Tetzlaff (which was previously funded by Wings for Life for a different subject) working at the ICORD (International Collaboration On Repair Discoveries) in Vancouver, Canada. Prof. Tetzlaff was presenting data proving that a ketogenic diet initiated after spinal cord injury improves functional recovery in rats. The ketogenic diet has been well recognized as an effective non-pharmacological treatment for different neurological disorders including epilepsy, Alzheimer’s disease, brain injury and Parkinson’s disease. Ketogenic diet contains a high content of fat, very few carbohydrates and variable amount of proteins. Due to the minimal dietary sources of glucose in Ketogenic diet, the energy supply of the brain primarily comes from ketone bodies produced in the liver via the metabolism of fats. This work demonstrates for the first time that a Ketogenic diet effectively promotes behavioral recovery even when started after the spinal cord injury event. The conclusion is therefore that patients with acute SCI may benefit from optimized diets and that there is an urgent need for revision/validation of the nutritional guidelines for acute SCI. This work was supported both the by the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation and the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation.
