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Neuroproteomic Methods in Spinal Cord Injury

Protocol
First Online:
Part of the Methods in Molecular Biology book series (MIMB, volume 566)

Summary

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a major public health problem with no known effective treatment. Traumatic injury to the spinal cord initiates a host of pathophysiological events that are secondary to the initial insult leading to neuronal dysfunction and death; yet, the molecular mechanisms underlying its dysfunction are poorly understood. Furthermore, while use of imaging methods (e.g., computed tomography scans and magnetic resonance imaging) may help define injury severity and location, they do not elucidate biological mechanisms of SCI progression. The lack of comparable biomarkers for monitoring SCI makes accurate diagnosis and evaluation of SCI progression difficult. Spinal cord contusion is an extensively used SCI model in rats that best represents the etiology of SCI in humans. In this chapter, we describe a two-dimensional (2D) gel electrophoresis-based proteomic approach to investigate the injury-related differences in the proteome and phosphoproteome of spinal cord lesion epicenter at 24 h after spinal cord contusion in rats. The purpose of this study is to elucidate the mechanisms of acute spinal cord dysfunction, as well as discover novel biomarker candidates to evaluate the biological mechanisms of SCI progression and the injury severity.

Key words

Spinal cord injury Contusion 2D gel electrophoresis Rat 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Dr. Melanie L. McEwen and Dr. Rangaswamy Rao Ravikumar for technical assistance. This work was supported by PHS grant NS46380 and an endowment from Cardinal Hill Rehabilitation Hospital.

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Copyright information

© Humana Press, a part of Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Departments of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Anatomy and Neurobiology and Spinal Cord and Brain Injury Research CenterUniversity of Kentucky Medical CenterLexingtonUSA

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