Damage to the adult mammalian central nervous system (CNS) often results in persistent neurological deficits with limited recovery of functions. The past decade has seen increasing research efforts in neural regeneration research with the ultimate goal of achieving functional recovery. Many studies have focused on prevention of further neural damage and restoration of functional connections that are compromised after injury or pathological damage. Compared to the peripheral nervous system, the failure of the adult CNS to regenerate is largely attributed to two basic aspects: inhibitory environmental influences and decreased growth capabilities of adult CNS neurons. Since early demonstration of successful growth of injured CNS axons into grafted peripheral nerve, multiple CNS axonal growth inhibitory factors have been identified and are mainly associated with degenerating CNS myelin (such as Nogo, MAG, OMgp) and with glial scar (such as chondroitin sulfate proteoglycans, CSPGs). However, blockade of these extracellular inhibitory signals alone is often insufficient for the majority of injured axons to achieve long-distance regeneration, as intrinsic regenerative capacity of mature CNS neurons is also a critical determinant for axon re-growth. Prof. Jianrong Li from Texas A&M University, USA proposed that combinatory strategies that enhance neuronal growth and in the meantime overcome environmental inhibitory cues appear to confer better axonal regeneration and neural repair. The relevant study has been published in the Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 9, No. 19, 2014).
Article: " Microfluidic systems for axonal growth and regeneration research " by Sunja Kim1,3, Jaewon Park2,3, Arum Han2,3, Jianrong Li1,3 (1 Department of Veterinary Integrative Biosciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA ; 2 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA; 3 Institution for Neuroscience, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA)
Kim S, Park J, Han A, Li J. Microfluidic systems for axonal growth and regeneration research. Neural Regen Res. 2014;9(19):1703-1705.
Contact: Meng Zhao
eic@nrren.org
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Neural Regeneration Research
http://www.nrronline.org/