University of Cincinnati researchers have pioneered an animal model that sheds light on the role an understudied organ in the brain has in repairing damage caused by stroke. The research was published July 2 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and sought to learn more about how the adult brain generates new neurons to repair damaged tissue. The research team focused on the choroid plexus, a small organ within brain ventricles that produces the brain's cerebrospinal fluid (CSF).
CSF circulates throughout the brain, carrying signaling molecules and other factors thought to be important for maintaining brain function. However, prior to this study, little was known about the roles the choroid plexus and CSF play in brain repair after injury due to a lack of available adult animal models. We have discovered a new use of an animal model to be able to allow us to manipulate the adult choroid plexus and CSF for the first time.
Now that we've discovered it, this will be vitally applicable to allow researchers to manipulate the adult choroid plexus and CSF to study different disease models and biological processes." Agnes (Yu) Luo, PhD, corresponding author on the study, and professor and vice chair in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences in UC's College of Medicine UC graduate student and study coauthor Aleksandr Taranov explained that in a process called adult neurogenesis, the adult brain maintains a certain capacity to repair damage by regeneratin.