Abstract
The first description of spinal cord injury (SCI) comes from the Edwin Smith papyrus, dating from seventeenth century "B.C". In this unique treatise, SCI was considered as an ailment that could not be treated.
To date, we still do not have the tools needed to regenerate nervous tissue. However, different approaches and strategies continue to emerge, putting pieces of knowledge together and trying to challenge SCI and improve patients' quality of life.
Modern techniques have been employed to analyze the changes after SCI. Some of the new approaches and strategies are described or summarized in this Special Issue.
The combination of transcriptomics, proteomics, and bioinformatics provides a comprehensive overview of proteins with persistent differential expression at the mRNA and protein level, and from the subacute (7 days) to the chronic (8 weeks) phase of SCI lesion development. A combined analysis identified 40 significantly upregulated versus 48 significantly downregulated molecules.
This screening revealed several possible therapeutic candidates, which were so far not considered as potential targets, but they possess important bioactivity, such as the upregulated purine nucleoside phosphorylase (PNP), cathepsins A, H, Z (CTSA, CTSH, CTSZ), and proteasome protease PSMB10, as well as the downregulated ATP citrate lyase (ACLY), malic enzyme (ME1), and sodium-potassium ATPase (ATP1A3)