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Hello - another scientific discovery speeding us towards cure.... Delthia Ricks, a writer who is interested in the research area of nerve regeneration, has written a second article in Newsday, a daily newspaper serving the New York,Long Island area. I spoke with her last week, hoping to interest her in the greater PD picture, including the Udall bill efforts. Vernice Roberts has been in touch with her as well, and perhaps we will be able to get a future article written with the political details included. http://www.newsday.com/mainnews/rnmi0327.htm Plastic May Spur Nerve Growth By Delthia Ricks. STAFF WRITER Actor Christopher Reeve, former President Ronald Reagan and former boxing champion Muhammad Ali have one thing in common: They all have conditions in which nerves do not recover. Now, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Children's Hospital at Harvard University have moved closer to making nerves grow anew by exposing them to a highly charged form of plastic - although only in a lab dish. Reporting in today's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers say they have developed a polymer, a type of film called a polypyrrole, that can stimulate nerve growth because of its ability to carry a charge and conduct electricity. "What motivates us," said Robert Langer, a professor of chemical engineering at MIT and a member of the team, "is that there are electric aspects about nerves themselves." When damaged nerves and the polypyrrole are exposed to an additional electric charge, he said, "the nerves grow even more, at least double." The electricity, scientists hypothesize, may stimulate nerve growth factors inherent in the tissue, triggering regrowth. The regenerated nerves studied were taken from rats. The human body is a storehouse of bioelectric activity. Electrical charges underlie nerve transmission, the firing of messages from one nerve to another. Bioelectric impulses power the heart and maintain the syncopated beat of the heart. Yet it has long been one of the challenges in medicine and dogmas of science that, once destroyed by injury or disease, nerve cells cannot regenerate. With limited success, doctors using microsurgical techniques have juxtaposed the severed ends of damaged nerves and coaxed spurts of growth, but ultimately without perfect function. They've also transplanted healthy nerves from one part of the body to sites of injury. Such grafting nevertheless has consequences. The procedure requires multiple surgeries and produces an inevitable deficit where the healthy nerve was removed. And often, Langer and his colleagues say, there is a mismatch in dimensions between transplanted nerves and those of the recipient site. Dr. Arturo Alvarez-Buylla, an associate professor and head of the neurogenesis laboratory at Rockefeller University in Manhattan, has found a small globe of nerve cells in the brain of some mammals that can regenerate, but exploiting those cells clinically for humans could take years, even decades. The new work by Langer, Dr. Joseph Vacanti of Harvard and other members of the team is part of an evolving science called tissue-engineering. The technique already has produced transplantable skin for burn patients and cartilage for people with osteoarthritis. Scientists also have used fetal cells to seed the growth bladders and windpipes for sheep. Adding nerves to the list could open the door to endless clinical applications. "We know the biocompatibility is very good," Langer said of exposing raw nerves to the polypyrrole. "That was the main thing that we really had to find out." 08/19 Margaret Margaret Tuchman (55yrs, Dx 1980)- NJ-08540 [log in to unmask]