Terrence J. Sejnowski<\/a>, professor and head of the Salk Institute’s Computational Neurobiology Laboratory, who led the study. “We’ve discovered a new target that could be efficacious. This particular pathway or ion channel is a key player in this disease, and we think that manipulating it could have a huge benefit for people suffering from MS.”\n<\/p>\n\nMultiple sclerosis affects an estimated 400,000 Americans and more than 2.5 million people worldwide. A chronic, often disabling disease that attacks the central nervous system, it is responsible for a baffling range of neurological symptoms, including numbness, tingling, muscle weakness, paralysis, and vision loss.\n<\/p>\n
\nIt is thought to result when the immune system attacks the myelin sheath that insulates axons, the nerve fibers that conduct electrical impulses to and from the brain and between neurons within the brain. Ordinarily, the myelin speeds up the signals the axons transmit, called action potentials.\n<\/p>\n
\nWhen axons lose their insulation, however, either signal conduction fails because the demyelinated axons are unable to generate an impulse, resulting in a loss of sensation, weakness, or blindness, or the axons become hyperexcitable and overcompensate by firing even in the absence of an input, causing twitching.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe first computer model of axonal transmission, developed in the 1950s for the giant axon of the squid, which lacks myelin, tracked positively charged sodium and potassium ions, whose movements across the neuronal membrane generate the necessary electrical signals. Building on that model, Sejnowski and his team included myelin in their own model, then demyelinated one of the sections and incorporated all the changes known to take place as a result.\n<\/p>\n
\n“It’s been known for a long time that the two most important ions in the axon are sodium and potassium,” says Sejnowski. “What we did was use a program that can model every part of the axon by breaking it into little segments so we could we keep track of the ions going in and out of each segment. And what we found really surprised us.”\n<\/p>\n
\nThe vast majority of prior clinical studies had focused on the sodium channel, which is responsible for initiating the action potential, and many of the targets for MS drugs likewise focus on the sodium channel. While enhancing the sodium current did boost the signal in Sejnowki’s model, to everyone’s amazement, it was the ratio of densities between the sodium channel and a previously ignored but ubiquitous voltage-insensitive potassium current called the leak current, which sets the ground state of the neuron, that determines whether neurons can fire properly.\n<\/p>\n
\nIf the sodium level drops, an accompanying drop in the leak current will maintain the signal, whereas if the sodium drops but the leak current doesn’t, signal transmission may fail. Conversely, if the sodium level is too high and the leak current doesn’t increase, a patient may experience twitching. The “safe” zone lies between the two limits.\n<\/p>\n
\n“Trying to influence the balance between the two ion channels is a completely new approach, and drugs that target leak currents could be as important as those targeting the sodium current,” adds Sejnowski. “I think we have a good chance at some point to help MS patients. The first step is to understand what’s going on.”\n<\/p>\n
\n“Our model offers a novel explanation for many of the peculiar and intermittent symptoms that MS patients experience,” says first author Jay S. Coggan, who had studied leak channels in previous work. “The injured axon is continually struggling to maintain order within a functional range. There is danger to the right and left. A variety of perturbations can nudge the axon one way or the other. It makes sense that leak channels might participate in these changes.”\n<\/p>\n
\nIn some instances, for example, their symptoms worsen if they are too warm, but improve if they are cooled off-a phenomenon that correlates to the fact that these channels are temperature-dependent. “If a patient is near one of the boundaries and only marginally ‘safe,’ heating up could cause him or her to cross into the failure zone,” Coggan adds. Temperature, therefore, hints at which boundary the patient is approaching.\n<\/p>\n
\nBeyond MS and demyelinating diseases, insights into the sodium\/leak current have applications to intractable pain-a field that Sejnowski’s group will be investigating next.\n<\/p>\n
\nIn addition to Sejnowski, Coggan and Thomas Bartol of the Salk Institute, Steve Prescott, an assistant professor in the Department of Neurology at the University of Pittsburgh contributed to the study.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe work was funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.\n<\/p>\n
\nAcerca del Instituto Salk de Estudios Biol\u00f3gicos:<\/strong>
\nEl Instituto Salk de Estudios Biol\u00f3gicos es una de las instituciones de investigaci\u00f3n b\u00e1sica m\u00e1s destacadas del mundo, donde un cuerpo docente de prestigio internacional investiga cuestiones fundamentales de las ciencias de la vida en un entorno \u00fanico, colaborativo y creativo. Centrados tanto en el descubrimiento como en la formaci\u00f3n de las futuras generaciones de investigadores, los cient\u00edficos del Salk realizan contribuciones revolucionarias a nuestra comprensi\u00f3n del c\u00e1ncer, el envejecimiento, el Alzheimer, la diabetes y las enfermedades infecciosas mediante el estudio de la neurociencia, la gen\u00e9tica, la biolog\u00eda celular y vegetal, y otras disciplinas relacionadas.\n<\/p>\n\nLos logros del cuerpo docente han sido reconocidos con numerosos galardones, entre los que se incluyen premios Nobel y la pertenencia a la Academia Nacional de Ciencias. Fundado en 1960 por el Dr. Jonas Salk, pionero en la vacuna contra la poliomielitis, el Instituto es una organizaci\u00f3n independiente sin fines de lucro y un hito arquitect\u00f3nico.\n<\/p>\n
\nEl Instituto Salk se enorgullece de celebrar cinco d\u00e9cadas de excelencia cient\u00edfica en la investigaci\u00f3n b\u00e1sica.<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","faculty":[114],"disease-research":[],"class_list":["post-2053","disclosure","type-disclosure","status-publish","hentry","faculty-terrence-sejnowski"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/p>\n