Research Progress in Area 4 方向 ( 四 ) 課題進展 191 Abstract Neurotrauma such as spinal cord injury leads to devastating and persistent neurological deficits. The major reason of disability is disconnection of neural networks by axonal damage, despite survival of many neurons. Thus, successful regeneration of axons has the potential to provide functional neurological recovery. Both the shRNA and the compound targeting the same gene can promote axon regeneration in vivo. Prof. Liu’s team is currently testing the effect of this kind of compound in the spinal cord injury model. Thus, their pilot experiments have established the proof of principle using primary adult neurons to identify additional potentially pro-regenerative targets and compounds. They propose to use this platform to screen marine natural bioactive compounds for axon growth in vitro; to verify compounds for axon regeneration in vivo; and to examine the effects in a spinal cord injury model. Research Activities and Progress • Undertook primary sensory neuron culture and cell line culture for detection of neurite growth promoting effect. • Tested around 50 crude extractions from marine bacteria fermented under different conditions for neurite promoting activity in differentiated cells. • Verified hit extraction with repeated experiments and primary mice sensory neuron culture. • Tested subfractions from the hit crude extraction in cultured cells. • Tested the purified compounds from the hit subfractions, and generated the dose response curve. Key Findings • Three crude extractions were identified as possessing promoting effect on neurite growth in a cell line, confirmed by repeated experiment. • One crude extraction showed reproducible promoting effect in primary sensory neuron culture, indicating the potential for in vivo activity. • Nine subfractions were obtained from this hit extraction, and two of them showed promoting effect in cultured cells. • One pure compound was obtained from the hit subfraction, which was showed to have dose dependent promoting effect in neurite outgrowth. Research Output Publication 0 Trained personnel 1 Discovering Novel Marine Natural Bioactive Compounds for Neural Repair Prof. Kai Liu The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Fig 1. Microscopy images showing PC12 cells neurite assay.
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