Research

研究活動

セミナー詳細

2014年04月21日

'Lessons from developmental neurobiology applied to translational neuroscience: BDNF in the cochlea

日 時 2014年04月21日(月) 16:00
講演者 Gary Housley博士
講演者所属 The University of New South Wales Chair and Head of Physiology Director, Translational Neuroscience Facility School of Medical Sciences
お問い合わせ先 鍋倉 淳一 (Junichi Nabekura) (生体恒常機能発達機構, tel:7851)
要旨

Across the breadth of brain and nervous system injury and disease, neurotrophin signalling is moving to the vanguard of neurotherapeutics. The potency of neurotrophins to stimulate neural repair following sensorineural hearing loss exemplifies this. The establishment of the afferent innervation of the cochlea occurs via a precise spatiotemporal program, where promiscuous spiral ganglion neurite outgrowth is followed by pruning and selective neuronal apoptosis; processes inherently tied to neurotrophin signalling. Sensori-neural hearing loss, for example with noise or chemical ototoxicity, causes loss of the neurotrophin source and consequent auditory nerve atrophy. Cell-based, drug or gene therapy strategies around the neurotrophin translational research platform in the cochlea promote vigorous auditory nerve regeneration, with directional guidance queues reminiscent of the developmental programming. Such control of neural repair provides an opportunity to enhance medical bionics neural prosthetic interfaces; a neurotrophin gene delivery platform we have developed has established proof of principle showing improve hearing performance with cochlear implants.