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When Yadong Wang, a chemist by training, first ventured into nerve regeneration two years ago, he didn't know that his peers would have considered him crazy.
His idea was simple: Because neural circuits use electrical signals often conducted by neurotransmitters to communicate between the brain and the rest of the body, he could build the chemical messengers into the material used to repair a broken circuit. The neurotransmitters could coax the neurons in the damaged nerves to regrow and reconnect with their target organ.
Strange though his idea might have seemed to others in his field, Wang, an assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, discovered that he could integrate dopamine, a type of neurotransmitter, into a polymer to stimulate nerve tissues to send out new connections.
The discovery is the first step toward the eventual goal of implanting the new polymer into patients suffering from neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's or epilepsy, to help repair damaged nerves.
The "designer" polymer was recognized by the neurons when used on a small piece of nerve tissue and stimulated extensive neural growth. The implanted polymer didn't cause any tissue scarring or nerve degeneration, allowing the nerve to grow in a hostile environment after injury.
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