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Scientists Move Closer To Cure For Damaged Nerve Cells Washington - March 16, 2004 3:34:48 PM IST New evidence found by researchers in rats and mice holds promise for designing treatments that might help not only people with brain diseases, but also victims of severe spinal cord and brain injuries. The researchers in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences report that they were able to prevent the death of damaged neurons by neutralizing a specific protein the injured cells secreted. Neurons carry messages from the brain to the spinal cord and the rest of the body. Damaged neurons are rendered useless by the physical interaction of two cellular proteins, proNGF and p75. The researchers learned that treating these injured cells with a proNGF antibody kept the proteins from interacting. In turn the neurons were saved from almost certain loss. For reasons researchers don't fully understand, neuronal damage causes a dramatic change in p75's behavior. Instead of sending information to the cell body, p75 turns into a receptor that kills the cell, but only in the presence of proNGF. "Knowing how these proteins influence each other gives us a window of opportunity to design a drug that could keep them from interacting," said Sung Ok Yoon, a lead author of the study and assistant professor of molecular and cellular biochemistry at "Coming up with a compound that crosses the blood-brain barrier is difficult," Klaus Giehl, felloe lead author said. "If we create a molecule to keep p75 and proNGF from binding, we may be able to develop a therapy for patients." The researchers examined brain and spinal cord tissue from healthy rats and mice and compared them to tissue from injured animals. They looked for signs of proNGF and p75 in each group of tissues, finding both proteins in abundance in damaged neurons, but missing in healthy ones. Yoon said that p75 is actually the protein that kills neurons, but it needs proNGF to do so. p75 is a receptor in healthy neurons, it receives signals from outside the cell, translates them, and feeds them to the cell body. The researchers took another group of damaged neurons and treated these cells with an antibody to proNGF. Doing so kept proNGF from interacting with p75, and resulted in a 92 percent survival rate of otherwise damaged neurons. (ANI) SOURCE: Webindia123.com, India http://www.webindia123.com/news/showdetails.asp?id=33714&cat=Health * * * ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn