Maureen Condic likes using car analogies to describe her research on nerve regeneration.
“It’s as though you have a ’57 Chevy on blocks?,” she’d say, or, “The proteins provide traction for the cells.”
In Condic-speak, the road is the surface on which neurons (nerve cells) grow. As a neuron stretches to reach another cell, it uses proteins on its surface to grab onto the road. These proteins, named integrin, are the tires for the growing neuron, as Condic likes to describe.
While recent research has been concentrating on the road, Condic has been more interested in the tires. Her promising work, which could lead to treatments for nervous system injuries, has landed her a $300,000 award from the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience.
It was a little anticlimactic for the car-minded Condic, since no van pulled up with a big cardboard check. Just a formal letter notified her, but Condic is looking forward to the formal presentation, where she will be honored along with the other five winners and rub elbows with big-name scientists.
“One of the nice things is you do gain access to a community of high-caliber people,” said Condic, an assistant professor in neurobiology and anatomy. Condic said that’s important at this stage of her young career.
Although she declines to disclose the size of her existing funding, which comes from public and private sources, Condic said the additional money will make a difference. Condic’s work has been done on petri dishes, and hiring additional staff?which she intends to do with majority of the award money?will speed the move to an animal model.
“The animal is the acid test. It proves us right or wrong,” Condic said. “We could have the most exciting theory and nothing happens [in the animal].”
Because of this uncertainty, Condic said she can’t predict a time-frame for clinical application.
“It always goes slower than people would like,” Condic said. “I have no basis for speculation. If the animal gives me an exciting result then we can go to clinical tests more rapidly.”
Even if the experiments fail, Condic said her work could be a component of a solution instead of the “ultimate theory.”
“We have a much stronger effect than anything seen before,” she said, but she remains cautious.
“We do fumble in the dark, despite what people tell you,” Condic said. “Our ignorance is just too large.”