Neural Regeneration Research ›› 2019, Vol. 14 ›› Issue (10): 1695-1696.doi: 10.4103/1673-5374.257515

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Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) promotes recovery from spinal cord injury in lampreys: role of GABA receptors and perspective on the translation to mammals

Daniel Romaus-Sanjurjo, María Celina Rodicio, Antón Barreiro-Iglesias   

  1. Department of Functional Biology, CIBUS, Faculty of Biology, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain

  • Online:2019-10-15 Published:2019-10-15
  • Contact: Antón Barreiro-Iglesias, PhD, anton.barreiro@usc.es.
  • Supported by:

    This work was supported by grants from Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the European Regional Development Fund 2007–2013 (BFU2014-56300-P and BFU-2017-87079-P); a fellowship from EMBO (7010, to DRS); a grant from the Xunta de Galicia (2016-PG008, to ABI) and a grant from the crowdfunding platform Precipita (FECYT; Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness; 2017-CP081).

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Abstract:

In mammals, spinal cord injury (SCI) is a devastating event that can lead to a permanent loss of motor, sensory and autonomic functions below the site of injury. In the last years, the role of different neurotransmitter systems on regeneration and recovery from SCI has been deciphered. For example, studies in lampreys have shown that eurotransmitters play a key role in modulating the survival and regeneration of brainstem descending neurons after SCI. Glutamate is known to play a prominent role after SCI since it causes excitotoxicity to non-injured neurons during the secondary phase after a traumatic injury both in mammals and lampreys. In contrast, recent work in lampreys has shown that γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) can play a neuroprotective and pro-regenerative role after SCI. GABA is the main inhibitory neurotransmitter in the central nervous system (CNS) of vertebrates, and acts through both metabotropic G-protein-coupled GABAB receptors, and ionotropic ligand-gated chloride channel GABAA receptors. Here, we discuss recent work from our group and others on the possible role of different GABA eceptors in neuronal survival and regeneration after SCI and provide a perspective on future work in this field.