Scientists have detailed how a combination of grafted replacement motor neurons and optical nerve stimulation—using light to activate neurons—can improve muscle function in a highly aggressive mouse model of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
Reviewed Preprint, is described by the editors as a fundamental study that presents convincing evidence for the restoration of muscle innervation and contractions in an advanced form of ALS. The findings could eventually pave the way for an assistive therapy that can be uniformly applied to all ALS patients.
Bryson and colleagues have previously demonstrated a proof-of-concept strategy to overcome muscle denervation in a nerve injury model of muscle paralysis in mice. The strategy uses a technique called optical nerve stimulation to stimulate grafted replacement motor neurons which have been modified to be light sensitive, using a small light-emitting diode.
This treatment helped prevent graft rejection and successfully restored some of the nerve connections to the target muscles. However, the force of the muscle contractions afforded by the treatment was still relatively weak. To ensure regular stimulation, they therefore used a wireless optical stimulation system in the mice to impose regular muscle contractions for 1 hour each day. After 21 days of this optical stimulation training, the mice showed a more-than 13-fold improvement inThese findings are important as they show that affected muscles in an ALS mouse model remain receptive to reinnervation by healthy engrafted motor neurons, even until the late stages of the disease.
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