Blue Horizons

Experimental drug may limit harmful effects of traumatic brain injury
A new report by UK researchers Linda
Van Eldik and Adam Bachstetter describes an experimental drug candidate
that may aid patients with traumatic brain
injury (TBI). The article appeared in the
journal PLoS One, the world’s largest
biology journal.
According to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC), falls,
motor vehicle collisions and assaults
make up the most common causes of
TBI. Symptoms of TBI, which include
impaired cognition, memory, and motor
control, may be temporary or permanent
depending on the severity of the injury.
“Following a head injury, the body
mobilizes immune cells to respond to
the trauma and jump-start the healing
process,” said Linda Van Eldik, who is
director of the UK Sanders-Brown Center on Aging. “Although these immune
cells help repair the injury, they also cause
inflammation that may damage the tissue
— a sort of double-edged sword.
“Our goal is to find ways to improve
the positive effects of the immune sys-

tem while thwarting the inflammation
process that damages tissues,” she said.
Van Eldik’s laboratory identified
and began testing the experimental
drug MW151 in 2007. In initial testing,
MW151 appeared to inhibit the release
of the “bad” chemicals that caused inflammation while preserving immune
cells’ repair capabilities in a form of TBI
known as a closed head injury. Further
evidence of MW151’s effectiveness was
manifested in reduced cognitive impairment.
The current work described in PLoS
One tested MW151 in a second, more
serious form of TBI known as mFPI.
“We were delighted to see that
MW151 is effective in more than one
model of TBI,” said Adam Bachstetter,
who is assistant professor in the Spinal
Cord and Brain Injury Research Center (SCoBIRC) and the Department of
Anatomy and Neurobiology and the
lead author for the PLoS One article.
“MW151 appears to dampen down the
detrimental inflammatory responses

without suppressing the normal functions that the cells need to maintain
health.”
According to Van Eldik, the potential
impact of this treatment is significant.
“Traumatic brain injury represents a
major unmet medical need, as there is
currently no effective therapy to prevent the increased risk of dementia and
other neurologic complications, such as
post-traumatic epilepsy, neuropsychiatric
disorders, and post concussive symptoms
such as headaches, sleep disturbances,
memory problems, dizziness and irritability,” she said. “MW151 represents an
important next step in the process to
help people with TBI, including soldiers,
athletes, car accident victims and others.”
Van Eldik hopes to move MW151
into clinical trials in the next few years.
Compiled from news reports
about research at UK.
For more information about
research taking place at UK,
visit www.research.uky.edu

Researcher to focus on improving
diets of teens

3-D models of spreading tumors
may help fight cancer

With a grant funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture,
Alison Gustafson will study the food purchasing patterns of
teens in rural areas of Kentucky and North Carolina. The end
result will hopefully be improved overall health and well-being
of the participants.
“Teens purchase quite a bit of food themselves,” said Gustafson, an assistant professor in the UK Department of Dietetics and Human Nutrition in the College of Agriculture, Food
and Environment. “They also have a huge influence on the
foods that their parents purchase.”
According to the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 18 percent of Kentucky high
schoolers and 12.5 percent of high school students in North
Carolina were obese in 2013.
In the four-year study, Gustafson will work with 14- and
15-year-old students in Clinton, Knox, Magoffin and Greenup
counties. North Carolina counties include Greene, Lenoir and
Pitt.
Gustafson will gather information about the availability of
foods in participants’ homes, schools and communities, their
shopping patterns and group of friends. She will then work
with local family and consumer sciences Extension agents to
develop and implement a curriculum based on the teens’ social
networks and environments. The curriculum will emphasize
eating more fruits and vegetables, drinking more water and
consuming fewer sugar-sweetened beverages.

UK researchers Ren Xu and Gaofeng Xiong at the Markey
Cancer Center and the Department of Pharmacology and
Nutritional Sciences show it is possible to create a three-dimensional (3-D) model system to investigate how breast cancer cells
invade lung tissue in a study that was featured on the front cover of the journal Integrative Biology.
Advanced breast cancer tumors shed cells that can colonize
other tissues in a process known as metastasis. If physicians
detect malignant breast tumors early, they can remove tumors
before they metastasize. After tumors gain the ability to traverse
the bloodstream, they become much more difficult to treat. In
order to develop treatments targeting metastatic cancers, researchers need new models that more accurately reflect cancers
physicians treat in the clinic.
Xu’s laboratory created the 3-D lung tissue matrix by removing the cells from the tissue while preserving the extracellular
matrix that make up the tissue’s structural components. The researchers then showed breast cancer cells could colonize in the
lung matrix in a manner resembling metastasizing breast cancer
in patients in the clinic.
Xu believes the 3-D model may help develop drugs that inhibit breast cancer progression.
Along with the UK Markey Cancer Center, this work was
supported by the American Heart Association, Department of
Defense and a COBRE pilot grant and does not necessarily reflect the views of those institutions.
www.ukalumni.net

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