Did you see this news from the Reeve Foundation?
The Reeve Foundation's North American Clinical Trials Network will begin a Phase 1 safety study of riluzole, a drug that is already FDA-approved for use in ALS patients. Laboratory studies have shown riluzole to be effective in protecting cells from dying immediately after a spinal cord injury. If it's possible to regrow nerves from the brain, is it also possible for those nerves to make the right connections with their target cells in the spinal cord? Regeneration alone isn't sufficient for function: regenerating axons must find their correct address! Reeve Foundation funded scientists Joel Glover and Marie-Claude Perreault are exploring this critical question using new state-of-the-art imaging to follow growing axons and map them as they connect with their targets. New drug therapies offer great promise. Reeve Foundation individual grantee, J. Marc Simard, Ph.D., is exploring whether the drug gibenclamide, long used to treat diabetes, will reduce the initial damage to the nervous system caused by a spinal cord injury. Stem cells are formidable research tools. In the Reeve Foundation Research Consortium, scientist Fred H. Gage, Ph.D., is using human embryonic stem cells to grow working spinal circuits in a dish. In the body, these circuits transmit signals from the brain and spinal cord to the muscles that control walking and other voluntary movements. In the dish, Dr. Gage can see what happens when the axons are cut and he can test drugs to see if they limit the damage to the axons.
--
