The recent Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington, DC, showcased a huge range of work that, in the whole, leaves little doubt that regenerative medicine and functional recovery are moving forward.
(A tip of the MadWire hat to Steven Edwards, a C3 quad from South Carolina and a moderator for the CareCure community who compiled a long
list of the SCI related papers.)
Even if you have little tolerance for the academic nature of the writing, it’s possible to tease out quite a bit of optimism from Edwards’ list. Here is a paper that caught my eye, a) because it’s aggressively intended to go to clinic soon; b) it was funded in part by the Reeve Foundation; and c) because it sounds like a pill to make you walk.
The formal title is “Pre-clinical and clinical development of a drug treatment for Central Pattern Generator (CPG) activation and 'reflex' stepping induction.” A group from Quebec led by Pierre Guertin began with the body of evidence that stepping motions in paralyzed animals are controlled not by brain input but in the spinal cord by a central pattern generator.
The role of the CPG is central to the field of activity based rehabilitation (e.g. the Reeve Foundation
NeuroRecovery Network, which has in many people been able to activate the CPG with repetitive stepping patterns using weight-supported treadmill therapy).
Guertin, who has already set up a company in Quebec called NeuroSpina Therapeutics Inc. to take his early lab results to the clinic, went fishing for the molecular basis of CPG activation. Using a mouse model his group tried what he calls “a plethora of serotonergic, glutamatergic, adrenergic and dopaminergic ligands over the years.” Some of the drugs worked to induce rhythmic movements, flexion and extension, but when it came time to put weight on the hindlimbs, they had no success with true stepping.
So, using the skills of a bartender, Guertin mixed a drug cocktail (based on role of serotonin receptors) he has since patented and named
Spinalon. He describes this drug as “First-in class activator of the Central Pattern Generator for locomotion. It acutely evokes, upon systemic delivery, repetitive walking movements for one hour in chronic and complete SCI subjects.” OK then, for the record, a drug to make your legs move in the pattern of walking.
Says Guertin, it appears to work. Weight bearing stepping has occurred in animals, and he’s gone on to try the drug in at least one human: “The first pilot test in patients was done recently. A monoplegic man who received Spinalon every 2 days for 2 weeks showed no atypical side effects providing first preliminary evidence of safety in men (Spinal Cord, in press).”
You might join me in wondering how a scientist can go from yet-to-be published data on humans to a full-on clinical trial, but Guertin is undeterred. People are already being recruited to test Spinalon, he says. Here's to everyone's patterns and to their continued generation.
Mad
