Growth-Promoting Treatment Screening for Corticospinal Neurons in Mouse and Man

Neurons of the central nervous system (CNS) that project long axons into the spinal cord have a poor axon regenerative capacity compared to neurons of the peripheral nervous system. The corticospinal tract (CST) is particularly notorious for its poor regeneration. Because of this, traumatic spinal c...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cellular and molecular neurobiology 2020-11, Vol.40 (8), p.1327-1338
Main Authors: Hanuscheck, Nicholas, Schnatz, Andrea, Thalman, Carine, Lerch, Steffen, Gärtner, Yvonne, Domingues, Micaela, Bitar, Lynn, Nitsch, Robert, Zipp, Frauke, Vogelaar, Christina F.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Axons
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Biomedicine
Cell Biology
Central nervous system
Growth cones
Inflammation
Interleukin 4
Nervous system
Neurobiology
Neurosciences
Original Research
Pyramidal tracts
Regeneration
Spinal cord
Spinal cord injuries
Tissue culture
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Neurons of the central nervous system (CNS) that project long axons into the spinal cord have a poor axon regenerative capacity compared to neurons of the peripheral nervous system. The corticospinal tract (CST) is particularly notorious for its poor regeneration. Because of this, traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) is a devastating condition that remains as yet uncured. Based on our recent observations that direct neuronal interleukin-4 (IL-4) signaling leads to repair of axonal swellings and beneficial effects in neuroinflammation, we hypothesized that IL-4 acts directly on the CST. Here, we developed a tissue culture model for CST regeneration and found that IL-4 promoted new growth cone formation after axon transection. Most importantly, IL-4 directly increased the regenerative capacity of both murine and human CST axons, which corroborates its regenerative effects in CNS damage. Overall, these findings serve as proof-of-concept that our CST regeneration model is suitable for fast screening of new treatments for SCI.
ISSN:0272-4340
1573-6830
DOI:10.1007/s10571-020-00820-7