Repair and regeneration properties of Ginkgo biloba after ischemic brain injury.

Abstract

The irretrievable fate of neurons dominated the neuroscience rhetoric for the first half of this century, a position that was fiercely contested and recently debunked by extensive studies carried out in the field of neuroregeneration research. The turning point came in the year 1928, when Ramon Y. Cajal's (Lobato, 2008) work suggested that the regenerative capacity of neurons, though limited, could exist beyond their physical being and depended on the environment surrounding them. That the manipulation of the restrictive environment surrounding the neuron could aid the regenerative process was conclusively established by Aguayo and colleagues (Richardson et al., 1980). Since then, various strategies have been employed to target the different phases of regeneration which include: cell-replacement and augmenting endogenous neurogenesis, the use of trophic factors, reversal of the inhibitory cues, and induction of signaling pathways that stimulate axon growth and guidance (Horner and Gage, 2000).