High Throughput Strategy for Testing Nerve Regeneration
Finding new drugs to promote regeneration of damaged nerve cells holds great promise for diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, spinal cord injury, brain trauma, and more. Many potential treatments, while promising in cell cultures, fail to promote regeneration in living animals. In a paper published October 13th in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Mehmet Yanik, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an NIH Director's New Innovator awardee, demonstrates a novel method to rapidly screen potential drugs for their ability to promote nerve regeneration in the nematode C. elegans. Using this method, Dr. Yanik and colleagues discovered that compounds which regulate protein kinase C (PKC), an enzyme important for many different cellular processes, can modulate nerve regeneration after injury in specific neurons. The ability of this method to efficiently screen large numbers of potential drugs in living animals may greatly accelerate the discovery of new treatments to promote nerve regeneration.
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