From Science Daily.com and American Chemical Society posted on their site (4-10-2002) (Researcher Ronald L.Schnaar, Ph.D.)
Researchers at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine have identified a set of "compounds" that they think keep spinal cords and nerves from regenerating when they are damaged. When nerve cells are damaged the myelin apparently sends signals that stop the axons from regenerating. The researchers think that if they can stop those signals sent from the MAG (myelin associated glycoproteins), then the axon will regrow on it's own.
The way an injury fits into the picture is that normally MAG-ganglioside interactions are stable, but if you get a nerve injury MAG bunches up all the gangliosides and BAM!, no way to get nerve growth. I say BAM! because the article is very non-specific about this process. Oh, the gangliosides are found on the nerve cell surface.
The disclaimer the doctors repeat over and over is that they have found just one way that nerves are prevented from regenerating and there could be many other obstacles to overcome before they can actually regenerate a human being's spine. They have only completed lab studies, this hasn't been tried on a human, just dissected rat nerves in the lab.
One more neat thing they found is four chemicals that they already knew mess with myelin-axon interactions can induce nerve regeneration in rat brain cells. No published results on this though.
This is all super preliminary research but in the future this could treat MS and spinal cord accidents and have many other possible applications!
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/04/020410080250.htm
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