Word: erk
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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However, a team of researchers led by Beverly M. Murray, an HMS research fellow in neurology, and Edwin J. Furshpan, Robert Pfeiffer professor of neurobiology at HMS, have discovered that a member of the MAP kinase family known as ERK may be involved in the activation of one or more of these excitotoxic pathways...
...ERK is well-known for its role in cell growth and division, but this is the first study implicating it in excitotoxic pathways...
...investigators mixed cultured brain cells with an ERK-blocking drug, PD098059, and induced seizures in the cells (seizures are also thought to utilize excess glutamate to promote death in neighboring cells). They found that when the ERK was blocked, the cells were safe from deadly glutamate exposure...
Alessandrini and his colleagues carried out experiments of their own, where they injected the ERK-blocking drug into seven mice and then blocked the blood vessels in their brains...
They found that, on average, the region of cell death in mice receiving the ERK-blocking drug was 55 percent smaller than that of mice not given the drug. Alessandrini noted that in his study, the ERK-blocking drug was administered to the mice before or at the beginning of a stroke, a situation that may not be practical in humans. However, researchers believe that the findings do give hope for discovering other possible ways of stopping a stroke after it has begun...