Integrated systems analysis reveals conserved gene networks underlying response to spinal cord injury

ABSTRACT: Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a devastating neurological condition for which there are currently no effective treatment options to restore function. A major obstacle to the development of new therapies is our fragmentary understanding of the coordinated pathophysiological processeses triggered by damage to the human spinal cord. An additional challenge to translation of preclinical therapies is the reliance of clinical trials on standardized neurological assessments to enrol and stratify patients, rather than objective injury biomarkers. Here, we describe a systems biology approach to integrate decades of small-scale experiments with unbiased, genome-wide gene expression from the human spinal cord, revealing a gene regulatory network signature of the pathophysiological response to SCI. Our integrative analyses converge on an evolutionarily conserved gene subnetwork enriched for genes associated with the response to SCI by small-scale experiments, and whose expression is upregulated in a severity-dependent manner following injury and downregulated in functional recovery. We validate the severity-dependent upregulation of this subnetwork in prospective transcriptomic and proteomic studies. Our analysis provides a systems-level view of the coordinated molecular processes activated in response to SCI. Further, our results nominate quantitative biomarkers of injury severity and functional recovery, with the potential to facilitate development and translation of novel therapies.

INSTRUMENT(S): Bruker Daltonics instrument model

ORGANISM(S): Rattus Norvegicus (rat)

TISSUE(S): Parenchyma

DISEASE(S): Spinal Cord

SUBMITTER: Jenny Moon  

LAB HEAD: Leonard J. Foster

PROVIDER: PXD010192 | Pride | 2018-09-25

REPOSITORIES: Pride