Spinal Cord Regeneration Enabled By Stabilizing, Improving Delivery Of Scar-Degrading Enzyme

Main Category: Neurology / Neuroscience
Also Included In: Biology / Biochemistry
Article Date: 03 Nov 2009 - 4:00 PST

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Researchers have developed an improved version of an enzyme that degrades the dense scar tissue that forms when the central nervous system is damaged. By digesting the tissue that blocks re-growth of damaged nerves, the improved enzyme - and new system for delivering it - could facilitate recovery from serious central nervous system injuries.

The enzyme, chrondroitinase ABC (chABC), must be supplied to the damaged area for at least two weeks following injury to fully degrade scar tissue. But the enzyme functions poorly at body temperature and must therefore be repeatedly injected or infused into the body.

In a paper published November 2 in the early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers describe how they eliminated the thermal sensitivity of chABC and developed a delivery system that allowed the enzyme to be active for weeks without implanted catheters and pumps. This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

"This research has made digesting scar clinically viable by obviating the need for continuous injection of chABC by thermally stabilizing the enzyme and harnessing bioengineered drug delivery systems," said the paper's lead author Ravi Bellamkonda, a professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University.

Source: Abby Vogel
Georgia Institute of Technology Research News