The CPI Research Foundation has approved the research funding for four new pilot studies for cerebral palsy. They represent a $200,000 commitment in 2012 to cerebral palsy research and an anticipated additional $150,000 commitment in 2013.

The Cerebral Palsy International Research Foundation CEO and President Glenn R. Tringali said,

“With these research studies taking place in Washington D.C., San Francisco, Calgary, Canada and Victoria , Australia, there is both geographic and scientific diversity represented among these exciting new projects. Whether the path of scientific discovery is domestically and/or internationally based, our aim is to fund the best cerebral palsy research projects in the world.”

 

The four new pilot studies include the following. The first is at the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. and focuses on the role of altered astrocyte development and function in white matter brain injury after chronic hypoxia. It will look into cerebral palsy causes and help with neurological morbidity associated with cerebral palsy in low birth weight infants.

The second study at the University of California SF will look at pre-partum risk factors associated with cerebral palsy types. The goal is to develop new strategies and approaches to prevent cerebral palsy.

The next study will be at the University of Calgary and will examine direct muscle stimulation training with BTXA injections. The final study at the Southern Health/Monash Medical Centre in Victoria, Australia will look at the association between cognition and upper limb bimanual performance in children who have hemiplegic cerebral palsy and to interpret these findings based on the severity and types of brain injuries found.

Filed under: News by Admin
No Comments »

Filed under: News by Admin
Comments Off

Scientists from the Washington University School of Medicine have recently found something startling. Their recent article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science explains that they’ve found a protective protein, Nmnat1, that drastically reduces damage to the brain when the brain is deprived of oxygen and blood flow. The findings, which have so far only been done on mice, could potentially create a new strategy for treating cerebral palsy, strokes, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s Disease and other neurodegenerative diseases.

Five years ago, Jeff Milbrandt, MD, PhD first identified Nmnat1 when he showed that the protein can protect against damage to peripheral nerves in a person’s extremities. Another researcher, Phillip Verghese, PhD, who was a postdoctoral researcher in Holtzman’s laboratory, wanted to explore if the protein could also protect the brain.

More recently, the researchers have looked at the effects of oxygen and blood flow deprivation by comparing normal mice with those who were genetically engineered to have higher-than-normal levels of Nmnat1. What they found was shocking – and exciting. Within six hours, the mice with the enhanced Nmnat1 showed less brain injury than did those without. As they continued to follow up with the mice, they found that the MRI scans of the brain showed that the Nmnat1 might be even more protective than they had first imagined. The scans revealed virtually no brain damage over time.

Hotzman explained that, “There are two types of injury in the developing brain from inadequate oxygen and blood flow. One is necrosis, where cells swell rapidly, burst and die; another is apoptosis, where the cells shrink and die. We found that Nmnat1 prevents necrosis.”

While the researchers aren’t completely clear about how Nmnat1 protects the brain cells, they believe that it manages to block the effects of the neurotransmitter glutamate, which overstimulates and kills neighboring nerve cells.

As senior author David M. Holtzman, MD, the Andrew and Gretchen Jones Professor and head of the Department of Neurology, explained, “Under normal circumstances, the brain can handle a temporary disruption of either oxygen or blood flow during birth, but when they occur together and for long enough, long-term disability and death can result. If we can use drugs to trigger the same protective pathway as Nmnat1, it may be possible to prevent brain damage that occurs from these conditions as well as from neurodegenerative diseases.”

Filed under: News by Admin
Comments Off

A recent study by the National Institute of Health has revealed that
prenatal steroids seem to improve survival rates and limit brain
injuries in infants born as early as the 23rd week of pregnancy. Now,
guidelines suggest giving prenatal steroids to women at risk of a
premature delivery between the 24th and 34th weeks of pregnancy.

Infants born this early are small, frail, and often too weak to
survive. Those who are receptive to a hospital’s prenatal care can
sometimes grow to adulthood with minimal affects, but most newborns in
such situations will develop with a permanent disability such as minor
hearing loss, cerebral palsy and intellectual disability. New research
has revealed that prenatally-administered steroid hormones can
strengthen and support the development of a fetus’s lungs en utero.
The increased lung development helps the infant significantly during
and immediately after birth, improving its chances for survival and
possibly minimizing brain injuries.

According to study author Rosemary D. Higgins M.D., the research
findings “provide strong evidence that prenatal steroids can benefit
infants born as early as they 23rd week of pregnancy.”

The study was conducted by researchers of the NICHID Neonatal Research
Network, under the guidance of Waldemar A. Carlo, the director of the
Division of Neonatology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
The study participants analyzed medical records of 10,541 premature
infants from network hospitals during the years 1993 through 2009.
They also performed neurological exams on the 4,924 surviving infants
born during those years, 18 to 22 months following each of the
infants’ original due dates. All of the infants included in the study
were born in the 22nd through 25th weeks of pregnancy.

The research revealed that there was a 33% lower death rate of infants
born to women who received prenatal steroids compared with those who
did not. In fact, not only were there fewer deaths, but among the
surviving infants the rates of blindness, hearing impairment, cerebral
palsy and motor and cognitive development were more than 20% lower
than in cases where the mother was not treated with steroids.

Filed under: News by Admin
Comments Off

In an exciting development that could help scientists to learn more
about treating rare neurological diseases and more common problems
like Alzheimer’s, cerebral palsy, and others, physician-scientists at
Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and
Montefiore Medical Center have just been given an important grant.
This grant will allow them to create a clinical site for the Network
for Excellent in Neuroscience Clinical Trials (NeuroNEXT).

As one of only 25 federally-funded centers of this sort in the entire
country, the Einstein-Montefiore site has also partnered with Einstein
affiliates Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan and the North
Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System.

NeuroNEXT has the goal of facilitating Phase II clinical trails for
rare neurological diseases. In general, these trials face incredible
challenges both in gaining funding from the industry and in finding
participants. Many road blocks exist with Phase II trials which asses
how well a drug delivers effective results and with what frequency to
administer it. Once a drug that is promising is found, it is very
tricky to find enough participants with such rare disorders and it
requires doing so around the country.

The pre-existing network of sites with the NeuroNEXT network allows
researchers to bypass much of this red tape and these issues. As
Shlomo Shinnar, M.D., Ph.D. and co-principal investigator on the grant
said, “We’ll basically be a S.W.A.T. team. Researchers – and
interested physicians with no research experience – will be able to
tap into an existing infrastructure that can provide the research and
regulatory expertise to participate in these clinical trials.
Normally, when you build a multi-center study, it can take a year or
two to get the trial going. We hope to get this down to a few months.”

Mark Mehler, M.D., professor and chair of the Saul R. Korey Department
of Neurology at Einstein, chair of neurology at Montefiore, and the
Alpern Family Foundation Chair in Cerebral Palsy Research at Einstein
further explained how this grant is relevant for other neurological
issues. He said, “While this initiative offers us an opportunity to
dramatically change the lives of patients with these rare diseases,
the findings are also likely to provide insight into more common
neurological disorders, like migraines and stroke, which affect
millions of people.”

Filed under: News by Admin
Comments Off

Two out of every one thousand babies born today is at risk for brain
damage that can occur before, during and after delivery. These
injuries are often caused by infections in the blood or by a reduction
in the supply of oxygen and blood that can lead to brain
inflammations. More common in premature babies, such injuries result
in neurological problems like cerebral palsy, learning difficulties,
epilepsy and other issues.

Researchers at the University of Gothenburg’s Sahlgrenska Academy have
now discovered toll-like receptors (TLRs) in the innate immune system.
They believe that they play a primary role in the brain’s state in
newborns. Using mice in their study to simulate brain injuries like
those found in newborns, Linnea Stridh and her colleagues found that
specific TLRs contribute to brain damage following hypoxia.

As Stridh said, “An infection can activate these receptors, making the
brain more sensitive to hypoxia, resulting in worse brain damage. If
these signals are blocked, the degree of brain damage is reduced.”

It had previously been shown that these receptors are part of the
problem with stroke-related brain damage in adults. This is the first
time, however, that TLRs have been shown to be present in the immature
brain and to play a major role there. As Stridh explained, “By
understanding the role of toll-like receptors in the inflammatory
process following brain injury, we hope eventually to find more
effective treatment strategies.”

See the original study to learn more.
Source: http://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/27809

Filed under: Information, News by Admin
Comments Off

Scientists from the Washington University School of Medicine have
recently found something startling. Their recent article in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science explains that they’ve
found a protective protein, Nmnat1, that drastically reduces damage to
the brain when the brain is deprived of oxygen and blood flow. The
findings, which have so far only been done on mice, could potentially
create a new strategy for treating cerebral palsy, strokes,
Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s Disease and other neurodegenerative diseases.

Five years ago, Jeff Milbrandt, MD, PhD first identified Nmnat1 when
he showed that the protein can protect against damage to peripheral
nerves in a person’s extremities. Another researcher, Phillip
Verghese, PhD, who was a postdoctoral researcher in Holtzman’s
laboratory, wanted to explore if the protein could also protect the
brain.

More recently, the researchers have looked at the effects of oxygen
and blood flow deprivation by comparing normal mice with those who
were genetically engineered to have higher-than-normal levels of
Nmnat1. What they found was shocking – and exciting. Within six
hours, the mice with the enhanced Nmnat1 showed less brain injury than
did those without. As they continued to follow up with the mice, they
found that the MRI scans of the brain showed that the Nmnat1 might be
even more protective than they had first imagined. The scans revealed
virtually no brain damage over time.

Hotzman explained that, “There are two types of injury in the
developing brain from inadequate oxygen and blood flow. One is
necrosis, where cells swell rapidly, burst and die; another is
apoptosis, where the cells shrink and die. We found that Nmnat1
prevents necrosis.”

While the researchers aren’t completely clear about how Nmnat1
protects the brain cells, they believe that it manages to block the
effects of the neurotransmitter glutamate, which overstimulates and
kills neighboring nerve cells.

As senior author David M. Holtzman, MD, the Andrew and Gretchen Jones
Professor and head of the Department of Neurology, explained, “Under
normal circumstances, the brain can handle a temporary disruption of
either oxygen or blood flow during birth, but when they occur together
and for long enough, long-term disability and death can result. If we
can use drugs to trigger the same protective pathway as Nmnat1, it may
be possible to prevent brain damage that occurs from these conditions
as well as from neurodegenerative diseases.”

Filed under: Information, News by Admin
Comments Off

Filed under: News by Admin
Comments Off

Filed under: News by Admin
Comments Off

Several members of the Connecticut state legislature from both political parties are taking the initiative in launching a public discussion on the role of umbilical cord blood banking and its benefits. On February 1, 2010 a group of state legislators and medical experts gathered in Hartford for a bipartisan coalition on the importance of cord blood education and cord blood banking. (more…)

Filed under: News by Randal D. Getz MD, JD
Comments Off