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CONFIDENTIAL TO ALL CHAPTER HEADS.........Received May 2011
RESEARCH
I have asked Dr. Holmberg for a short summary of the present lab work with a “road map”
of what might be ahead. What follows is an update of our discussion.
We have had a number of questions with respect to our progress in getting the
electrophysiotherapy portion of our treatment protocols being humanized. The process of
accomplishing this after confirmation of our experiments is pretty straight forward. We are
in the process of completing the publishing portion of our work regarding these therapies.
As many may already know, the key to getting attention in the medical industry is having
your work reviewed and published in an acceptable professional journal. This gives us a
validity that can be publicly acknowledged and referred. The lab has published three
works so far and the final two in this series are in review as this is written*. In the review
process there are a number of questions that we have to answer and sometimes we
need to provide more data. In some cases, we find ourselves with a particularly hostile
reviewer who does not seem to be satisfied with any of our results. In some cases we
have received glowing reviews from one reviewer and damnation from another, all in the
same submission. We attempt to satisfy the criticisms and usually have our work
published. In some cases, we withdraw our submission and submit to a different journal.
The review process is certainly opinionated and is not standardized. Regardless of the
process these papers will be published and we always expedite our submissions.
The next step in the process will be to contact any one of a number of our collaborators in
clinical medicine to include their expertise and participation in the humanization. This will
require us to “pitch” our product to them and outline our ideas for initial human trials. The
TANES procedure is neither invasive nor procedurally complicated in its application. We
do not anticipate much controversy with its application. Our largest task will be to
effectively recruit clinical collaborators and shepherd the project to successful application.
*This was just received. This brings the published papers to 4. We plan to report on. this
in the June Newsletter.
“Scar ablation combined with LP/OEC transplantation promotes anatomical recovery and
P0- positive myelination in chronically contused spinal cord of rats”
Abstract. We have successfully removed an existing glial scar in chronically contused rat
spinal cord using a rose Bengal-based phototoxic method. The purpose of this study is to
examine if scar ablation benefits the anatomical recovery by cell/tissue transplantation,
and thus provides a more permissive physical and biochemical environment for axonal
growth, which may lead to functional recovery. Immediately after scar ablation, we
transplanted lamina propria (LP) of the olfactory mucosa alone or in combination with
cultured olfactory ensheathing cells (OEC) into the lesion cavity 6 weeks after contusion
injury (NYU impactor device, 25 mm height setting) at spinal cord segment T10 of adult,
female, Long-Evans rats. Sixteen weeks after scar ablation and transplantation, we found
that the initial repaired tissue significantly expanded, companied by remarkable reduction
or disappearance of the lesion cavity and integration of repaired tissue with the spared
tissue, thus resulting in histological repair of damaged cord tissue at the injury epicenter.
Glial scar reformation was effectively prevented after ablation due to the tissue repair. In
addition, at the injury epicenter P0 (myelin glycoprotein P-zero)-positive myelination
formed by Schwann cells, which are known to myelinate regenerating and demyelinated
axons, were significantly increased in number compared with the control animals.
However, when evaluated with BBB open-field scale a significant improvement of
locomotor function was not observed in this study; the possible reasons were discussed.
FUNDRAISING
We must keep pushing toward human trials and this will require all of the fundraising
effort the chapters can muster up. In spite of difficult economic times funding has been
stable. Keep it up.
RESEARCH
I have asked Dr. Holmberg for a short summary of the present lab work with a “road map”
of what might be ahead. What follows is an update of our discussion.
We have had a number of questions with respect to our progress in getting the
electrophysiotherapy portion of our treatment protocols being humanized. The process of
accomplishing this after confirmation of our experiments is pretty straight forward. We are
in the process of completing the publishing portion of our work regarding these therapies.
As many may already know, the key to getting attention in the medical industry is having
your work reviewed and published in an acceptable professional journal. This gives us a
validity that can be publicly acknowledged and referred. The lab has published three
works so far and the final two in this series are in review as this is written*. In the review
process there are a number of questions that we have to answer and sometimes we
need to provide more data. In some cases, we find ourselves with a particularly hostile
reviewer who does not seem to be satisfied with any of our results. In some cases we
have received glowing reviews from one reviewer and damnation from another, all in the
same submission. We attempt to satisfy the criticisms and usually have our work
published. In some cases, we withdraw our submission and submit to a different journal.
The review process is certainly opinionated and is not standardized. Regardless of the
process these papers will be published and we always expedite our submissions.
The next step in the process will be to contact any one of a number of our collaborators in
clinical medicine to include their expertise and participation in the humanization. This will
require us to “pitch” our product to them and outline our ideas for initial human trials. The
TANES procedure is neither invasive nor procedurally complicated in its application. We
do not anticipate much controversy with its application. Our largest task will be to
effectively recruit clinical collaborators and shepherd the project to successful application.
*This was just received. This brings the published papers to 4. We plan to report on. this
in the June Newsletter.
“Scar ablation combined with LP/OEC transplantation promotes anatomical recovery and
P0- positive myelination in chronically contused spinal cord of rats”
Abstract. We have successfully removed an existing glial scar in chronically contused rat
spinal cord using a rose Bengal-based phototoxic method. The purpose of this study is to
examine if scar ablation benefits the anatomical recovery by cell/tissue transplantation,
and thus provides a more permissive physical and biochemical environment for axonal
growth, which may lead to functional recovery. Immediately after scar ablation, we
transplanted lamina propria (LP) of the olfactory mucosa alone or in combination with
cultured olfactory ensheathing cells (OEC) into the lesion cavity 6 weeks after contusion
injury (NYU impactor device, 25 mm height setting) at spinal cord segment T10 of adult,
female, Long-Evans rats. Sixteen weeks after scar ablation and transplantation, we found
that the initial repaired tissue significantly expanded, companied by remarkable reduction
or disappearance of the lesion cavity and integration of repaired tissue with the spared
tissue, thus resulting in histological repair of damaged cord tissue at the injury epicenter.
Glial scar reformation was effectively prevented after ablation due to the tissue repair. In
addition, at the injury epicenter P0 (myelin glycoprotein P-zero)-positive myelination
formed by Schwann cells, which are known to myelinate regenerating and demyelinated
axons, were significantly increased in number compared with the control animals.
However, when evaluated with BBB open-field scale a significant improvement of
locomotor function was not observed in this study; the possible reasons were discussed.
FUNDRAISING
We must keep pushing toward human trials and this will require all of the fundraising
effort the chapters can muster up. In spite of difficult economic times funding has been
stable. Keep it up.
