Functional recovery and glial plasticity after traumatic brain injury in Ambystoma mexicanum

• Applicant: Privatdozentin Dr. Maria del Rosario Sanchez Gonzalez, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Experimental Models for the Understanding of Nervous System Diseases ; Molecular Biology and Physiology of Neurons and Glial Cells
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 511743451

Traumatic injury of the central nervous system is the leading cause of disability worldwide and in the majority of the cases the loss of motor and/or cognitive functions remains permanent. The main hindrance for the functional recovery is the formation of the glial scar and its induced detrimental environment. In order to promote functional and scarless wound healing in the mammalian brain it is necessary to first understand how these processes are spontaneously regulated in other vertebrates. There has been a long-held belief that species that can successfully integrate new neurons and restore the tissue architecture upon trauma (e.g. zebrafish) “must” activate mechanisms that suppress glial scar formation. However, I have demonstrated that zebrafish is able to replicate the main hallmark of the mammalian wound closure, the glial scar. Zebrafish has so far been the gold standard model to study successful regeneration upon TBI and there are no further studies describing scarless brain regeneration in other vertebrate species. My goal here is to establish Ambystoma mexicanum (Axolotl) as a regenerative model to study the wound healing response and functional recovery after TBI.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants