Bioinformatics Uncovers Regenerative Therapy for Spinal Cord Injury
Published in Bioinformatics, Drugs development.
For the first time, a drug shows effectiveness in adult human brain cells — an achievement long thought impossible.
Human brain cells are notoriously difficult to culture in the lab, but UC San Diego researchers successfully grew human brain cells, shown here, in order to test a new treatment approach for spinal cord injury. Photo Credit: Mark H. Tuszynski/UC San Diego Health Sciences
Spinal cord injury (SCI) remains a major unmet medical challenge, often resulting in permanent paralysis and disability with no effective treatments. Now, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have harnessed bioinformatics to fast-track the discovery of a promising new drug for SCI. The results will also make it easier for researchers around the world to translate their discoveries into treatments.
One of the reasons SCI results in permanent disability is that the neurons that form our brain and spinal cord cannot effectively regenerate. Encouraging neurons to regenerate with drugs offers a promising possibility for treating these severe injuries.
The researchers found that under specific experimental conditions, some mouse neurons activate a specific pattern of genes related to neuronal growth and regeneration. To translate this fundamental discovery into a treatment, the researchers used data-driven bioinformatics approaches to compare their pattern to a vast database of compounds, looking for drugs that could activate these same genes and trigger neurons to regenerate.
https://today.ucsd.edu/story/bioinformatics-uncovers-regenerative-therapy-for-spinal-cord-injury