1. Transcriptomics of post-stroke angiogenesis in the aged brain
or
2. A comparative study of NONOate based NO donors: Spermine NONOate is the best suited NO donor for angiogenesis
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3. Vascular remodeling after ischemic stroke: mechanisms and therapeutic potentials
or
4. Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor Key Element in Recovery from Stroke
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5.Safe and Effective Vascular Endothelial Cell Growth Factor (VEGF)-based Therapeutic Angiogenesis for Ischemic Stroke:
You really do expect your doctors and researchers to be able to do both of these at the same time? Don't you? This may be one of the few therapies for us chronic patients.
http://www.biosciencetechnology.com/news/2014/06/brain-may-be-able-repair-itself-within?et_cid=3974854&et_rid=648870051&type=headline
Duke researchers have found a new type of neuron in the adult brain that is capable of telling stem cells to make more new neurons. Though the experiments are in their early stages, the finding opens the tantalizing possibility that the brain may be able to repair itself from within.
Neuroscientists have suspected for some time that the brain has
some capacity to direct the manufacturing of new neurons, but it was
difficult to determine where these instructions are coming from,
explained Chay Kuo, an assistant professor of cell biology, neurobiology
and pediatrics.
In a study with mice, his team found a previously unknown
population of neurons within the subventricular zone (SVZ) neurogenic
niche of the adult brain, adjacent to the striatum. These neurons
expressed the choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) enzyme, which is required
to make the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. With optogenetic tools that
allowed the team to tune the firing frequency of these ChAT+ neurons up
and down with laser light, they were able to see clear changes in
neural stem cell proliferation in the brain.
The findings appeared as an advance online publication in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
The mature ChAT+ neuron population is just one part of an
undescribed neural circuit that apparently talks to stem cells and tells
them to increase new neuron production, Kuo said. Researchers don't
know all the parts of the circuit yet, nor the code it's using, but by
controlling ChAT+ neurons' signals Kuo and his Duke colleagues have
established that these neurons are necessary and sufficient to control
the production of new neurons from the SVZ niche.
"We have been working to determine how neurogenesis is sustained in
the adult brain. It is very unexpected and exciting to uncover this
hidden gateway, a neural circuit that can directly instruct the stem
cells to make more immature neurons," said Kuo, who is also the George
W. Brumley, Jr. M.D. assistant professor of developmental biology and a
member of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences. "It has been this
fascinating treasure hunt that appeared to dead-end on multiple
occasions!"
Kuo said this project was initiated more than five years ago when
lead author Patricia Paez-Gonzalez, a postdoctoral fellow, came across
neuronal processes contacting neural stem cells while studying how the
SVZ niche was assembled.
The young neurons produced by these signals were destined for the
olfactory bulb in rodents, as the mouse has a large amount of its brain
devoted to process the sense of smell and needs these new neurons to
support learning. But in humans, with a much less impressive olfactory
bulb, Kuo said it's possible new neurons are produced for other brain
regions. One such region may be the striatum, which mediates motor and
cognitive controls between the cortex and the complex basal ganglia.
"The brain gives up prime real estate around the lateral ventricles
for the SVZ niche housing these stem cells," Kuo said. "Is it some kind
of factory taking orders?" Postdoctoral fellow Brent Asrican made a key
observation that orders from the novel ChAT+ neurons were heard clearly
by SVZ stem cells.
Studies of stroke injury in rodents have noted SVZ cells apparently
migrating into the neighboring striatum. And just last month in the
journal Cell, a Swedish team observed newly made control neurons called
interneurons in the human striatum for the first time. They reported
that interestingly in Huntington's disease patients, this area seems to
lack the newborn interneurons.
"This is a very important and relevant cell population that is
controlling those stem cells," said Sally Temple, director of the Neural
Stem Cell Institute of Rensselaer, NY, who was not involved in this
research. "It's really interesting to see how innervations are coming
into play now in the subventricular zone."
Kuo's team found this system by following cholinergic signaling,
but other groups are arriving in the same niche by following
dopaminergic and serotonergic signals, Temple said. "It's a really hot
area because it's a beautiful stem cell niche to study. It's this
gorgeous niche where you can observe cell-to-cell interactions."
These emerging threads have Kuo hopeful researchers will eventually
be able to find the way to "engage certain circuits of the brain to
lead to a hardware upgrade. Wouldn't it be nice if you could upgrade the
brain hardware to keep up with the new software?" He said perhaps there
will be a way to combine behavioral therapy and stem cell treatments
after a brain injury to rebuild some of the damage.
The questions ahead are both upstream from the new ChAT+ neurons
and downstream, Kuo says. Upstream, what brain signals tell ChAT+
neurons to start asking the stem cells for more young neurons?
Downstream, what's the logic governing the response of the stem cells to
different frequencies of ChAT+ electrical activity?
There's also the big issue of somehow being able to introduce new
components into an existing neuronal circuit, a practice that parts of
the brain might normally resist. "I think that some neural circuits
welcome new members, and some don't," Kuo said.
Source: Duke University
Looks like I have a ton of reading to do here. Thanks. We just started choline supplementation last week. I`ve all ready seen some cool things happen. Observational studies you know. It`s seven years post(the whole brain stroke thing). Kicker is when I asked his doc about citicoline as a doc she wrote me a script for donepezil. It lasted about a week before BP dropped and he looked like shit. So far so good on the supplement. Just for fun tid-bit we`ve also tried pine in the past with some improvement. Pine needle tea and pine bark extract pills. Both seem to produce some benefit. It s an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor like the pharmaceuticals. Maybe soon I`ll try them both together. Ruth
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