Our client developed a novel therapeutic that they hypothesized would prevent or reverse this type of pathology. INTiDYN was asked to determine if this hypothesis was accurate.
ITD-CMA indeed confirmed that the therapeutic was successfully impacting the predicted innervation. However, the detailed analysis also discovered something else.
INTiDYN was asked to determine if the client’s therapeutic agent was limiting chemotherapeutic damage to cutaneous innervation.
Using different immunochemical markers than those routinely used to detect sensory endings, our ITD-CMA revealed that the chemotherapy was not causing a loss of innervation but was, in fact, causing a down regulation of the standard neuronal biomarkers. The innervation was mostly still present.
This finding dramatically shifted the therapeutic strategy from attempts to prevent neuronal loss to those that would act to restore normal neuronal biochemistry.
The client was performing a human study that evaluated physiological assessments of sensory nerve function (microneurography) to lay the groundwork for future therapeutic strategies to treat neuropathic pain by promoting regeneration of cutaneous innervation. INTiDYN was asked to perform CMA of cutaneous innervation to assess a wide variety of neuropathic conditions.
CMA revealed that a comparable loss of intraepidermal nerve fibers also occurred in neuropathies that were not painful, indicating that additional mechanisms beyond innervation loss were likely involved.
The scientific founders of INTiDYN, Dr. Frank L. Rice and Dr. Phillip J. Albrecht, are the foremost established experts in a holistic, comprehensive research approach that is renowned for integrating high-resolution, multi-molecular morphological assessments across a wide range of nonhuman and human research models.
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