Test drug treats paralysis in rats

INQUIRER.net PHOTO

PARIS, France A new compound, tested so far on rats, shows promise in restoring functions lost by paralyzing injury to the spinal cord, a study said on Wednesday.

Called intracellular sigma peptide (ISP), the drug helped lab animals with severe spinal injury recover the ability to urinate or move, or both, it said.

More work is needed, but the scientists behind ISP said the results boosted hopes for a future therapy for humans.

Were very excited at the possibility that millions of people could, one day, regain movements lost during spinal cord injuries, said Jerry Silver, a professor of neurosciences at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.

Published in the journal Nature, the research looked at ways of overcoming scarring when nerve fibers in the spinal cord are damaged and signals from the brain no longer reach muscles below the injury site.

Nerve fibers try to cross the injury site and reconnect with other fibers, but become trapped at the scar site by sticky proteins called proteoglycans.

ISP is designed to act on the receptor on the surface of the nerve cells. Like a switch, it turns off a response to the proteoglycans that causes the blockage.

In the experiment, 26 rats were given severe spinal cord injuries followed by daily injections of the treatment for seven weeks.

Twenty-one of the 26 regained one or more of three functions the ability to walk, to balance and to control when and how much they urinated.

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Test drug treats paralysis in rats