Sina Pourtaheri
Tulane University of Louisiana, LA·Biomedical Engineering
A traumatic spinal cord injury can permanently change a person's movement, sensation and independence, and the United States sees roughly 17,900 new cases each year at a lifetime care cost of $1.1-5.2 million per patient. Much of the lasting damage comes after the initial trauma, as a secondary wave of nerve cell death unfolds.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Pharmacology
Neuroscience
- Topics
spinal cord injury
nerve growth factor
neurotrophin
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2030
What they work on
- Synthesize a double-encapsulation system, des-n(NGFp), in which nanocapsules carrying a painless nerve growth factor variant are entrapped within double emulsions to control release kinetics.
- Test whether nanocapsule carriers that exploit choline transporters, the pumps cells use to take up choline, deliver NGFp across into the injured spinal cord at useful levels and for a sustained duration.
- Compare the painless NGF variant (NGFp) with wild-type NGF for nociceptor activation and for neuroprotective and neurotrophic potency on injured central nervous system neurons.
- Evaluate therapeutic efficacy of systemically injected des-n(NGFp) in a mouse spinal cord injury model, assessing neuron preservation, regeneration and neurologic recovery.
More about the research
Surgery to decompress and stabilize the spine helps, but when access to surgery is delayed, as often happens with battlefield injuries, outcomes are worse. This creates a need for drugs that can be given by simple injection into the bloodstream soon after injury to limit secondary damage and encourage nerve repair.
Why it matters
If the delivery system works, it could become an injectable treatment for people with spinal cord injury, including cases where surgery is delayed, such as combat casualties. The goal is to preserve and regenerate injured neurons and improve neurologic outcomes and quality of life without the pain that has blocked nerve growth factor from clinical use.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Qi Lin Cao
Florida International University, FL·Neuroscience
Determine how perivascular fibroblasts, support cells surrounding blood vessels, become activated and upregulate PI16 after cervical spinal cord injury, focusing on interferon-gamma signaling and fibrotic scar formation.
Anne-Marie Malfait
Rush University, IL·Neuroscience
Map nerve fibers and gene activity in skin from classic Ehlers-Danlos syndrome patients versus controls, using tissue staining and Visium spatial transcriptomics, which measures gene activity across tissue slices.
Michael Granato
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Neuroscience
Identify the neuronal populations where three habituation genes act, using transgenic behavioral rescue in zebrafish mutants defective in acoustic startle habituation.
The school
Tulane University of Louisiana: 17 labs on PI Pages, $276M a year on research, 187 research doctorates a year.
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