Nerve regeneration. From Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s “Estudios sobre la degeneración y regeneración del sistema nervioso” (1913-14). Via Scholarpedia.

First in a two-part series on nerve regeneration. Read part 2. 

Researchers have tried for a century to get injured nerves in the brain and spinal cord to regenerate. Various combinations of growth-promoting and growth-inhibiting molecules have been found helpful, but results have often been hard to replicate. There have been some notable glimmers of hope in recent years, but the goal of regenerating a nerve fiber enough to wire up properly in the brain and actually function again has been largely elusive.

“The majority of axons still cannot regenerate,” says Zhigang He, PhD, a member of the F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center at Boston Children’s Hospital. “This suggests we need to find additional molecules, additional mechanisms.”

Microarray analyses—which show what genes are transcribed (turned on) in injured nerves—have helped to some extent, but the plentiful leads they turn up are hard to analyze and often don’t pan out. The problem, says Judith Steen, PhD, who runs a proteomics lab at the Kirby Center, is that even when the genes are transcribed, the cell may not actually build the proteins they encode.

That’s where proteomics comes in. “By measuring proteins, you get a more direct, downstream readout of the system,” Steen says. …