Hard to Treat Diseases (HTDS.PK) Dr. Sanja Pekovic, Chief Project Scientist, Chief Strategy Officer Slavica BioChem reported that IBISS research group from Serbia has begun preliminary experiments within a project aimed at Promoting stem cell graft survival in the model of traumatic brain injury in rats. One of the goals of this project is to examine the potential role of Ribavirin in promoting survival of the stem cells transplanted after brain injury.
The results of a pilot study in this project were presented at the Human Pluripotent Stem Cells symposium: interrogating disease and development, organized by Dr Stephen Sullivan and Abcam, Dublin, Ireland, April 22 - 24, 2009.
Neural stem cells (SC) are a promising therapeutic tool in CNS disease and injuries. However, there are a number of obstacles which have to be overcome in order to achieve a therapeutically beneficial outcome. These include the problem of inducing differentiation of multipotent grafted SCs into desired cell type, rejection of grafted SCs by the recipient's immune system and glial scar formation following the injury, which can present both physical and chemical barrier to SC migration and differentiation.
In our study, we detected that daily injection of Ribavirin for 5 and 10 days considerably decreased the degree of reactive astrogliosis after traumatic brain injury in adult rats. Decrease of reactive astrogliosis leads to downregulation of glial scar formation.
However, the beneficial effects that astroglial cells can exert on recovery after injury should not be neglected. Our group continues to test different duration times and timing of Ribavirin treatment, which we believe to be crucial in balancing the positive and negative effects that astrogliosis may have.
The results were reported in the Poster presentation session by Dr. Ivana Gadjanski, research scientist in the IBISS group. Our results drew significant consideration from the attending scientists.
In other company events: As previously announced the set up of a new, redesigned website for the subsidiary Slavica Biochem (http://www.slavicabiochem.com/) has been completed and the web site launched. The new website presents updated information material on the research topics of the Slavica Biochem medical team from Belgrade, Serbia. The website is made in a very user-friendly format providing ample general information on the Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), as well as specific details on the methodology and results of the Slavica medical team. Patients and potential shareholders can also find, listed in a submenu on the Slavica biochem website, a number of selected links to other specialized websites dealing with MS and TBI.
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