Cerebral Cortex, 2020 · DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhaa142 · Published: November 1, 2020
After a spinal cord injury, the body's ability to repair damaged nerve connections is limited. This study investigates how certain molecules, called semaphorins, might prevent nerve fibers from regrowing after such an injury. Researchers found that after a spinal cord injury, the levels of specific semaphorins increase. These molecules then cause nerve fibers to retract, further hindering the healing process. The study also discovered that a protein called Olig2 is responsible for increasing the production of these inhibitory semaphorins after a spinal cord injury. By controlling Olig2, it may be possible to reduce the levels of semaphorins and promote nerve regeneration.
Targeting the Olig2 transcriptional machinery could be a novel therapeutic strategy to enhance regeneration after SCI by preventing expression of multiple inhibitory molecules simultaneously.
The study highlights the importance of understanding transcriptional control machinery as a far-reaching extrinsic mechanism that can impede axonal growth, providing insights for future research.
Additional methods that modulate scar tissue formation may be needed to overcome the strict inhibitory barrier to axon regrowth, suggesting the potential of combination therapies.