Protein lets brain repair damage from multiple sclerosis

A protein that helps build the brain in infants and children may aid efforts to restore damage from multiple sclerosis (MS) and other neurodegenerative diseases, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found.
In a mouse model of MS, researchers found that the protein, CXCR4, is essential for repairing myelin, a protective sheath that covers nerve cell branches. MS and other disorders damage myelin, and this damage is linked to loss of the branches inside the myelin.

For the study, Klein used a non-inflammatory model that involves giving mice food containing cuprizone, a compound that causes the death of cells that form myelin in the central nervous system. After six weeks, these cells are dead, and the corpus callosum, a structure that connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain, has lost its myelin. If cuprizone is then removed from the mouse diet, new cells migrate to the area and restore the myelin.

Klein plans to see if she can restore myelin repair in genetically engineered mouse models of MS. She also will work with Washington University colleagues to study the new model with advanced imaging techniques in an attempt to further clarify the relationship between loss of nerve cell branches and myelin damage in MS.
"We do not yet know if this myelin repair pathway is somehow damaged or impaired in MS patients," Klein says. "But I like the idea of turning on something that the brain already knows how to make by itself, allowing it to heal itself with its own molecules."