Many brain disorders involve damage to nerve cells. This can happen as a result of disease (for example, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease), a stroke (a disorder of the brain’s blood supply) or accident (a head injury or spinal cord damage).  Unlike most other tissues, the brain and spinal cord are very poor at repairing  themselves.  So we need to find ways of improving recovery from brain damage.  This research programme is part of a world-wide one to introduce new treatments for brain damage.  These are badly needed, since brain damage is not only common, but impairs quality of life both for the patient and his/her dependents and family.

Brain cells (neurons) connect to other brain cells by long processes (nerve fibres) .  The central part of this fibre is the ‘axon’, and this conducts the signal passing between the two nerve cells.

Wrapped round this axon is a layer of tissue which acts rather like the rubber sheath surrounding an electrical cable.  It’s called ‘myelin’.  Damage to either the axon or its myelin sheath will cause the nerve fibre to malfunction. Understanding how and why this occurs, and whether such damage can be either prevented or repaired is the central problem addressed in this EU research project.

There are various ways of approaching this problem.  We need to know much more about the way that axons themselves can be damaged, and how this might be reduced or reversed.  Axons can sprout, and thus form new connections. Helping this happen is one way of improving brain function after damage.  The myelin sheath is formed by a second class of cells in  the brain, called ‘glia’.  Some illnesses (eg multiple sclerosis) attack myelin, so if these cells could be encouraged to form more myelin, they should improve or even cure such disorders. The brain is full of stem cells: these can develop into all sorts of other cells, including both neurons and glia.  But mostly they remain inactive.   Activating them, or introducing new stem cells into the brain,  would help recovery from damage.