Tadpoles may be key to treating TBI

Medicinal breakthroughs can come in the unlikeliest forms. The chair of the University of Houston’s biology and biochemistry department, Amy Sater, is looking to tadpoles for treating traumatic brain injury(TBI).

According to an article recently published in the Houston Chronicle, Sater is in the early stages of research that will examine how different compounds affect tadpoles’ astrocytes, which are cells in the brain that respond to injury and keep neurons healthy.

Houston Chronicle reporter Lindsay Ellis conducted a Q&A with Sater about the unusual research.

Read the Q&A below, or click here to read it on the Houston Chronicle website.

Ellis: What are you looking for in these trials?

Sater: We’re hoping to look at how the astrocytes are responding to a focused impact injury in tadpoles. At a molecular level, what are the common elements? My hope is that two years from now, we’ll be in a position to start screening for compounds that show some sort of impact. We want to promote responses that are positive for regeneration. We want to inhibit responses that are hindering regeneration.

Ellis: Why use tadpoles instead of mice?

Sater: It’s a way to do a very broad scan in a reasonable amount of time. Using tadpoles, you can generate a whole bunch of embryos, and they will grow up to be a whole bunch of tadpoles. You can make them all be genetically the same. We’re going to screen 12,000 compounds and see if we can identify a small handful that would produce a desired effect. That’s not something that’s really feasible with a mouse. It’s just way too expensive. There are way too many mice. But it’s pretty straightforward to do in tadpoles.

Ellis: Why will this research change the world?

Sater: Brain injury is a debilitating condition. It’s one of these things that comes out of nowhere for people. When we thought about brain injury 15 to 20 years ago, it was something sudden and severe causing long-term damage. We’re kind of coming to understand now that repeated small injuries can be really damaging. My hope is that if we can do something that will contribute to people recovering more effectively, that would be such a huge improvement in the quality of the lives, of not just brain injury patients but the people who care for them.