The Harvard Gazette, Drug Limits Spinal Cord Damage
A common antibiotic used to treat arthritis and acne shows promise for limiting the severity of spinal cord and brain injuries.
When a fall, car crash, bullet, or knife crushes or cuts a spinal cord, the injury does not stop there. Rather, tissues continue to discharge toxic chemicals for hours, even days and weeks.
Increased stem cell proliferation in the spinal cord of adult amyotrophic lateral sclerosis transgenic mice
Harnessing the regenerative potential of the central nervous system to repopulate depleted cellular populations from endogenous stem cells would be a novel approach for the treatment of neurological diseases resulting from cell death.
Minocycline Inhibits Contusion-Triggered Mitochondrial Cytochrome C Release After Spinal Cord Injury, PNAS 2004
We investigated whether permeability transition-mediated release of mitochondrial cytochrome c is a potential therapeutic target for treating acute spinal cord injury (SCI). Based on previous reports, minocycline, a second-generation tetracycline, exerts neuroprotection partially by inhibiting mitochondrial cytochrome c release and reactive microgliosis. We first evaluated cytochrome c release at the injury epicenter after a T10 contusive SCI in rats.