Western team to use microchip technology to encourage nerve regeneration

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First - Gretchen - sorry I have not emailed you back sooner work is

crazy - I will write a longer email later, but want to share this item

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http://ca.news./s/capress/080307/health/health_health_regrowing_nerves

Fri Mar 7, 1:17 PM

By son, The Canadian Press

CALGARY - Dr. Doug Zochodne still clearly remembers the young patient

whose shoulder and upper arm were badly mauled in a car crash, causing

such nerve damage that his right hand was basically useless.

Years later, with plenty of pain but still no use of his arm below the

elbow, the man told doctors that they might as well just amputate and

be done with it.

" I thought that was very sad - someone in their 20s not to be able to

expect their hand to recover enough to use it or even get some

function out of it, " Zochodne said Thursday.

The University of Calgary neurologist and neurosciences professor

hopes such patients may one day be helped by new microchip technology

that will allow doctors to repair and regenerate nerves that have been

ravaged by injury or disease.

He is part of the Western Canada Regeneration Initiative, a team of

brain surgeons, bioengineers, neurologists and rehabilitation

specialists working with a throng of graduate students. The team, with

members from Edmonton, Calgary and Saskatoon, has just received a

$2.25-million grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

" Our ultimate goal is to undertake clinical trials and offer some real

hope for people who are suffering from untreatable nerve damage, " said

Zochodne.

The project is still in its infancy and literally moving at a snail's

pace.

Naweed Syed, head of cell biology and anatomy at the U of C's

Hotchkiss Brain Institute, has done a lot of the early work by

studying snail neurons and how they react with this electronic chip

technology.

The study started with snails because they have large brain cells that

emit large electric currents that make them easier to interface with

microchips.

There are currently major limitations to nerve cell regeneration. What

regeneration does take place is often incomplete and mismatched,

creating " neuropathic pain " as a major side-effect for patients who

have suffered traumatic injuries.

Surgeons are already implanting tiny silicon rods into trauma

patients, but the so-called regeneration tubes are little more than a

" passive bridge between nerve endings, " said Zochodne.

" Often, our repair strategies are only partly successful. "

By using electric currents emitted through the microchips implanted on

these regeneration tubes, the team hopes to be able to direct injured

nerve cells to grow in the right directions. And speed up the

regeneration.

Syed likens the regeneration of nerve cells without such direction to

the confusion of an intersection where the traffic lights have failed.

" What we'd like to do is use the chip technology to help these fibres

grow along a set path and control it with traffic lights: 'Turn left,

turn right, you stay, you go,' " said Syed from his lab near the

Calgary Foothills hospital.

" And in doing so, we avoid all this chaos that happens during nerve

injury - where the fibres get tangled up, jam up and eventually create

scar tissue. "

The team also hopes to experiment in using artificial scents or

chemicals that the body secretes when damage has occurred as a signal

that nerve regeneration is needed.

Zochodne said the project will likely take years and success will

eventually be measured in small movements.

" If you ask patients, they're looking for anything - any little extra

function of their hand to allow them to do more, " he said.

" Some sensation, some movement, it'll make a difference. Everything

they do, every day, depends on function like that. "