A new grant from the Colorado Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute on the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus will help Alison Xie, PhD, assistant professor in the Division of Urology in the CU Department of Surgery, advance her research on how glial cells in the peripheral nervous system affect bladder function.
Xie is working with Sarah Calve, PhD, associate professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering at CU Boulder to develop an animal model of the bladder and the nerves that control its function to see if stimulating glial cells — cells in the nervous system that help neurons to function — will cause the bladder to contract.
“In previous studies, I have proved that the same interaction in a similar neuronal cluster can drive heart contraction,” Xie says. “That's why we think this is going to work in the bladder as well. The goal of creating this model is to demonstrate that the contraction is due to the glial cell and neuron interaction in this neuronal cluster, and not due to any off-target effect.”
Shining a light
Xie plans to stimulate the glial cells using LED light, in a process that could be effective in people with decreased bladder function.
“We want to see if we can control to what degree the bladder can contract or relax, because overactivity in the bladder can create a lot of pain and urgency,” she says. “If someone has nerve damage or a spinal cord injury, they can lose their bladder control because there's no central command of their bladder anymore.”
“A patient like this will need to have a catheter a few times a day to release the urine, but if you can do something utilizing the glial cells and the neuron interaction there, we might have a very local therapy that we can use to prompt urination,” she continues. “It's impossible to reconnect the nerves in the spinal cord and fix a whole command system, but we might be able to target the last link in the command chain.”
Next stop NIH
Xie’s hope is that the CCTSI funding of the creation of the animal model will eventually lead to National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding of the glial cell research.
“For the NIH grant, we need to have good feasibility in our study — we have to demonstrate that we have the ability to do that experiment and every model that we use in the experiment is going to work,” she says. “The CCTSI grant will help us validate the model in order to apply for the next stage of funding.”
Xie says she is grateful for the CCTSI grant not only because it allows her to continue her research, but because it confirms that there is value in the work she’s doing.
“It's very easy for me, as a researcher, to think what I'm interested in is important, but whether or not it's truly important, I don't know,” she says. “Seeing the CCTSI reviewer comments on our grant application, which said this model is very innovative and very needed in the field, reconfirmed my judgment of what the field needs. That added some confidence, because if we apply for an NIH grant, we're going to be judged by people in the field. If the people in Colorado think this experiment is important, I have more confidence that the national urology field will find it important as well.”
