Noisemakers 2000: A glorious pain in the back

Three Montreal researchers are trying to bring injured spinal cords back to life

Half a million North Americans, plus untold millions around the world, would love to stand up and applaud the Montreal research team of Sam David, Lisa McKerracher and Peter Braun. And one day they might be able to: if the recent breakthroughs of the lab-research trio continue, the quadriplegics and paraplegics of the world could be dancing over their discarded wheelchairs.

The team of researchers--David and Braun work at McGill while McKerracher toils at the Universite de Montreal--recently identified an agent that blocks spinal cord recovery. The team tinkered with the idea of blocking the blocker and came up with a therapeutic vaccine that they tried out on disabled lab mice. By employing the mouse's own immune system to produce antibodies, the team blinded the inhibitors that block spinal cord regeneration. Their result would have been unthinkable a few years back: over half the mice regained some movement in their limbs.

It's safe to assume that rarely in history have adults shown so much excitement in witnessing a mouse wiggle a toe. McKerracher, who has studied spinal cord regeneration since moving here 12 years ago from Toronto, explained the spinal cord contains nerve fibers wrapped in an insulating membrane called mylene. Mylene is good, as it speeds communication in the central nervous system, but mylene also contains inhibitors that keep the spinal cord from repairing itself--a routine process for bones and other tissue.

A decade ago Swiss researchers studying multiple sclerosis came across the first of these inhibitors. McKerracher--who must read all studies on the subject as part of her job--went to hear one of the Swiss researchers speak and figured it'd be worth testing the same process on spinal cord injury. Within five years the Montreal trio had identified another inhibitor and got cracking in the lab, eventually coming up with an experiment that was chosen over 13,000 as the most noteworthy of scientific articles.

How big would it be to cure paraplegia and quadreplegia? David, who came here from Bombay by way of Winnipeg, points out that, "The money isn't the driving force. If you want the money, you work in pharmaceuticals." And while McKerracher notes that it's considered unethical to announce any new, untested advances the team might have made, her voice rang with understatement when she said: "We're very excited about the new stuff we're working on now." l

-- KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

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