Brain Pioneers Perfecting Tiny Sensors to
Capture Critical Chemical Events

Medicine: University of Kentucky teams attack diseases such as
Alzheimer's and Parkinson's at their microscopic source.
From Associated Press

LEXINGTON, Ky. Decenber 2, 2000 -- Greg Gerhardt doesn't mind being
called a "brainiac."

As a professor of anatomy and neurobiology at the University of
Kentucky, Gerhardt is the first to admit he's fascinated by the brain
and how its cells communicate.

He came to the  university last year to create the Center for
Sensor Technology, where researchers work to gain knowledge of
the fundamental processes that occur during chemical interactions
among nerve cells in the brain.

Gerhardt hopes that a better understanding of the
cell-communication process will lead to breakthroughs in the
treatment of such neurological disorders as PARKINSON'S disease,
Huntington's disease and Alzheimer's.

"We don't understand the actual chemical signaling going on in
the brain that allows you to move or think," Gerhardt said. "The
new technologies that we are developing here will allow us to enter
the world of chemical communication between cells.

"We're going to figure out why neurodegenerative diseases have
such a big impact on people's lives. The brain's circuitry is being
destroyed by these illnesses. By better understanding the
communication process, we can better repair the damage to the
brain at the cellular level."

Don Gash, chairman of the College of Medicine's Department of
Anatomy and Neurobiology, said the center is a prestigious addition
to the university.

"It's great to be at forefront of such exciting research," Gash
said. "We are actually building instruments here in Lexington that are
going to be used throughout the world. People who want to do this
kind of research in London or Switzerland or wherever in the future
are going to be looking to us for the technology and the expertise,
and that's exciting."

Gerhardt established he center in 1991 at the University of
Colorado Health Sciences Center. But after joining the College of
Medicine in 1999, he arranged to transfer the Colorado center's
National Science Foundation funding to the University of Kentucky.

Research at the Center for Sensor Technology focuses on the
development and use of high-tech sensors and other state-of-the-art
equipment, such as tiny microelectrodes, for studies of brain
function. The microelectrodes can be implanted in various regions of
the brain to measure tiny amounts of chemicals such as dopamine,
norepinephrine, serotonin, glutamate and nitric oxide.

"We design and build these very small sensors to understand
how cells in the brain, called neurons, actually communicate with
one another," said Gerhardt, who also serves as director of the
university's Morris K. Udall Parkinson's Disease Research Center.

"These cells are very small, about a third of the size of a human hair.
So in order to go into that environment and listen to how neurons
speak, we have to develop by hand these very tiny sensors that are
even smaller than the neurons themselves.

"In fact, with Harvard we are working on a procedure to
actually use the sensors during neurosurgery as a tool to understand
more of what's wrong with the brain of a person that has
Parkinson's or epilepsy."

The sensors measure lightning-quick chemical interactions that
nerve cells use to exchange signals. These molecules are recorded
by the tiny sensors and transmitted to a computer program where
researchers can monitor the reactions.

Studies are under way using sensors implanted into the brains of
laboratory rats which allow researchers to monitor what is going on
in the animals' brains while they are in motion and at rest.

A more detailed picture of the neurological signaling system
could lead to better understanding of schizophrenia, depression,
aging, aggression, drug abuse and even smell and taste, Gerhardt
said.

"We really don't understand a lot about smell and taste systems
and how they operate," he said. "Right now, we're working with a
marine biological laboratory on a study of lobsters and how they
smell. As it turns out, a lobster is a good model system to
understand many of the signaling properties that take place in the
human nose to trigger smells.

"When an odor enters your nose, it binds to odor receptors.
There then is a chemical interaction that takes place to signal the
brain to identify that smell. It is a very rapid process, and you need
very fast recording methods to be able to watch how that occurs.
These sensors allow us do that."

  Copyright 2000 Los Angeles Times


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Judith Richards, London, Ontario, Canada
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