The Gaudet lab has been awarded funding by the Wings for Life Foundation to test new neuroprotective therapies for spinal cord injury!
The project is called “Targeting B cell autoimmunity to enhance neuroprotection, locomotor recovery, and pain relief after spinal cord injury.” This supports an exciting new collaboration between Dr. Gaudet and Dr. Peter Grace - a Professor at UT MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Grace previously showed that removing adaptive immune cells called B cells reduced pain behaviors after peripheral nerve injury, and that reducing antibody levels — immune molecules released by B cells — also relieved pain.
Spinal cord injury allows blood-borne cells to infiltrate the spinal cord. Immune cells encounter injured tissue and respond by releasing factors — including antibodies — that remove infections and clear debris. Antibodies released by B cells can amplify inflammation and cause the immune system to mistakenly attack surviving nerve cells. Unfortunately, this drives spreading tissue destruction, called secondary damage, which worsens loss of function and chronic pain after spinal cord injury. Dampening these harmful immune cascades and antibody responses are promising therapeutic strategies, yet remain largely unexplored in neurotrauma.
Here, we predict that targeting B cells and antibody release in mice using two repurposed FDA-approved drugs will protect the injured spinal cord, ultimately improving locomotor recovery and pain relief. We will test whether acute delivery of a drug to deplete B cells (an analogue of rituximab), or a drug that reduces antibody levels (efgartigimod), benefits neuroprotection and functional outcomes after injury. We will also test whether delivery of these drugs at a later time point can reverse chronic pain that has already been established. We expect that targeting B cells and antibodies will reduce tissue loss, improve motor function, and relieve chronic pain in preclinical models of spinal cord injury.
These results are expected to establish B cell-targeted immunotherapy as a clinically translatable strategy for improving neuroprotection and recovery after spinal cord injury.
We would like to thank Wings for Life for their support — we're excited to get this work underway.