Monday, November 29, 2004

Brain Repair According to NeuroScience Canada, "brain repair is a new field of interdisciplinary, collaborative research aimed at exploring the brain's ability to be repaired, or to repair itself. This field of research is relevant not only to neurological conditions such as stroke, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, but also to mental illness and addiction, the latter increasingly recognized as resulting from chemical and molecular imbalances in the brain that may be amenable to repair strategies." "Smart" drugs capable of targeting specific brain cells to control psychiatric disorders such as autism and schizophrenia may be ready for early clinical trials within three years, with the launch of a $1.5 million project to take place at the Brain Research Centre (BRC), a partnership of the University of British Columbia and Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute (VCHRI). In a recent press release, the BRC announced that they are designing a whole new generation of medications that will work only on brain cells in areas that need to be repaired. This new type of drug will correct abnormal brain functions in a targeted way, so patients will not experience the side effects found in existing medications that affect the entire brain. These newly developed drugs would be the first significant change in decades to medications used to treat psychiatric disorders. Using sophisticated equipment, researchers will be able to view, study and manipulate brain messaging at the cellular level, the team will test their design of a type of drug that can fine-tune communication between brain cells and bring excitatory and inhibitory activity into a healthy balance. Currently used antipsychotic drugs adjust communication on cell surfaces throughout the brain. Balance is restored in affected areas, however, the drugs may cause imbalance in normal, unaffected areas, leading to negative side effects. Side effects such as lethargy, extrapyramidal symptoms ( e.g. involuntary movements, tremors and rigidity, body restlessness, muscle contractions and changes in breathing and heart rate.) or anxiety can limit prolonged use of these medications. The new generation of "smart" drugs will target only the cells where communication balance is impaired, leaving healthy areas of the brain unaffected. The Brain Repair Program was launched 1 year ago and is funding teams of investigators with the goal of accelerating innovative brain repair research that will be translated into better patient care. According to the program, "escalating knowledge and new technologies across disciplines are identifying common mechanisms regulating processes for repair, restructuring, remodelling and recovery of brain function. The challenge is to coordinate the strands of new knowledge and translate them into repair and recovery strategies that could be applicable to many diseases and disorders of the brain and nervous system." 10:23:04 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2004 rsk. Last update: 12/6/04; 11:38:56 PM.