Scientists identify main component of brain repair after stroke | Hacker News Reader

Scientists identify main component of brain repair after stroke

nih.gov

85 pointsOatseller8 comments

This is important news that's analogous to stem cell therapy for stroke patients... like my mother.

This work was supported by grants from the NINDS (NS085019, NS086431) and the American Heart Association (09SDG2310180).

Has she made progress with this therapy? I'd heartily appreciate as much commentary as possible. My mother also had a stroke many years ago. Best wishes.

Why is this of particular interest? I work in a neurology research lab that specializes in stroke. There are dozens of proteins that have similar effects, BDNF, EGF, VEGF, NGF, etc., not to mention miRNAs.

This is just one small component of brain repair.

Oddly, it seems that I am seeing more of this on HN lately.

This sound really cool. Have there been any new significant developments in neurology recently?

How early does these trigger growth ? I find it a bit paradoxical that in a time of resource denial growth should occur. Obviously I'm missing something.

Link to article: http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nn.41...

Link to pdf: http://www.nature.com.sci-hub.club/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurre...

>“We found that GDF10 caused many different neurons in a dish to grow, including human neurons that were derived from stem cells,” said Dr. Carmichael.

NGF (Nerve Growth Factor) is added to dishes nearly every time such experiments are done to get neurons to grow. I'm sure they plated them on laminin or whatever substrate works best for those neurons as well. I haven't read the paper, but from the layman's description this sounds like hype.

Im not sure if this is a new find. Doctors in Japan and Karolinska Institutet in sweden did something similar when they took samples from patients who received cord cell transplants. The findings suggested suggested that brain function can be improved using mesenchymal cells that secrete growth factors and cytokines which activate a mechanism that leads to improved neuro function,neurogenesis and angiogenesis. The issue is that the results should be able to be verified with long-term follow ups to evaluate functional outcomes and possible harmful effects.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11988611

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=stem+cells+AND+s...

http://stemcellthailand.org/therapies/stroke-ischemic-hemorr...

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