Sustained Delivery of Activated Rho GTPases and BDNF Promotes Axon Growth in CSPG-Rich Regions Following Spinal Cord Injury
Figure 6
A. Fluorescent images of the untreated control, BDNF and CA-Rac1 treatment conditions at 10×. White box represents the area of the image shown to the right at 40×. The arrows represent the beginning of the lesion site. The average distance of the closest axons to lesion site is written. The images on the right show the closest axons to the lesion site. B. Axonal retraction from the lesion site in the treated and control spinal cords. The distance of 3 or more axons from the lesion site in each image was averaged. All the treated cords had axons within 1 mm of the lesion site and were significantly closer to the lesion site compared to the untreated and agarose treated cords. BDNF and CA-Rac1 were the most effective treatments and were within 400 µm to the lesion site. The data represents mean ± SEM. One way ANOVA and Tukey's test were used to statistically analyze the data. (A p<0.05 compared to untreated controls and B p<0.05 compared to agarose control). C. Percent of axonal outgrowth towards the lesion site. The percent of axons was measured from 4 mm proximal to the beginning of the lesion site. The graph shows that 2 mm from the lesion site, the 68–72% of the axons are present in the conditions treated with CA-Cdc42 and CA-Rac1 compared to the untreated and agarose controls, which had significantly lower percent of axons (45–50%). One millimeter away from the lesion site, there were not any axons in the control conditions, where as there were 35–45% of the axons in the spinal cords treated with CA-Rac1. The data represents mean ± SEM (A p<0.05 compared to untreated control and B p<0.05 compared to agarose).