Its not quite a Sherlock Holmes thriller, but the detective work undertaken by Dr Judith Blake in Edith Cowan Universitys School of Medical Science for her PhD could have far-reaching implications for the treatment of serious nerve damage.

Dr Blake has been on the hunt for cells in the peripheral nerve that express a gene known as Pax3, which is known to help maintain stem cells. In the process, she has discovered for the first time that adult peripheral nerve tissues contain stem cells that express the gene, meaning they can be targeted for future therapies.

Pax3 is what we call a developmental gene, that works in the embryo in particular, and it has been found to regulate the stem cells of many tissues, Dr Blake said. It used to be thought that Pax3 was only expressed in the embryo but recently it has been found that there are cells that express Pax3 in the adult.

The problem was that although some researchers reported Pax3 was being expressed in adult peripheral nerve tissues they couldnt find the cells of expression.

At the same time, other scientists had argued that there was no sign of Pax3 expression in adult peripheral nerve tissues.

Dr Blake and her supervisor, Associate Professor Mel Ziman, went looking, employing technologies able to search for the tiniest amount of gene and protein expression.

Knowing the role of Pax3 as well as our team did, it was either that the expression of Pax3 other people had reported was incorrect or that as it turned out there were stem cells there but they were difficult to find, she says.

There are so few stem cells in the adult peripheral nerve, they are very small, and they are quiescent, so that when they are not activated they do not have much gene expression, just a small amount at a baseline level to keep the cell maintained.

One of the key findings of our research was that we conclusively showed that there are cells expressing Pax3 in the adult peripheral nerve and that these cells were also found to express other key stem cell markers.

The implications of the work are significant and Dr Blake hopes that the work could provide new avenues for therapies to treat peripheral nerve disorders.

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Gene detective work offers therapy hope

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