Grant: Project Grant

Numerous neurological conditions and traumatic injuries disrupt connections between nerve in the adult mammalian central nervous system (CNS). Damaged CNS neurons have a limited capacity to repair themselves leading to motor, sensory and cognitive impairments. Promoting axon regeneration could support neurological recovery from a variety of conditions and serve as an adjunct for cellular transplantation approaches. There are currently no approved treatments to stimulate CNS axon regeneration. An exciting advance in the CNS regeneration field is that specific changes in gene expression in injured neurons can trigger extensive axon regeneration; however therapeutic translation of these findings is limited by off-target effects associated with these particular genes. An alternative attractive strategy to positively regulate the repair of injured neurons is through targetting a family of molecules called miRNAs that affect the expression of many genes simultaneusly and may thus have robust effects on axon regeneration. We are using a combination of cell based and animal models to identify miRNAs with robust axon regeneration promoting activity and are identifying the molecular targets of these miRNA that may be therapeutically targeted to promote axon regeneration following injury.