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A drug to help brain heal itself
A drug usually in the headlines when top athletes are found out as substance cheats could soon be helping people to recover from a traumatic brain injury.
Australian scientists are part of a global effort looking at whether erythropoietin - otherwise known as EPO - can boost the brain's recently discovered ability heal itself.
The dogma 10 years ago was that the brain was "absolutely unable to generate new neurones ... if they got lost they could never be replaced", explains Associate Professor Cristina Morganti-Kossmann from the National Trauma Research Institute (NTRI) at Melbourne's The Alfred Hospital.
"But it has been shown there is a very small number of new neurones that are generated continuously, even in adult life," she says.
"And that is exactly what a lot of laboratories in the world are trying to understand, and explore, and find ways to increase this endogenous phenomenon."
Dr Morganti-Kossmann's laboratory is about to embark on a three-year study in mice, which will look for signs of brain healing linked to EPO as well as another drug known as brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF).
A drug to help brain heal itself
A drug usually in the headlines when top athletes are found out as substance cheats could soon be helping people to recover from a traumatic brain injury.
Australian scientists are part of a global effort looking at whether erythropoietin - otherwise known as EPO - can boost the brain's recently discovered ability heal itself.
The dogma 10 years ago was that the brain was "absolutely unable to generate new neurones ... if they got lost they could never be replaced", explains Associate Professor Cristina Morganti-Kossmann from the National Trauma Research Institute (NTRI) at Melbourne's The Alfred Hospital.
"But it has been shown there is a very small number of new neurones that are generated continuously, even in adult life," she says.
"And that is exactly what a lot of laboratories in the world are trying to understand, and explore, and find ways to increase this endogenous phenomenon."
Dr Morganti-Kossmann's laboratory is about to embark on a three-year study in mice, which will look for signs of brain healing linked to EPO as well as another drug known as brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF).
A drug to help brain heal itself