Net Miles Of Smiles

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Who would have thought that a little girl from Darliston in Westmoreland would turn out to be a First World scientist who may have discovered a new way to repair damaged nerves?

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Now living in Canada, Jamaican-born Dr Patrice Smith and her colleagues at Harvard have discovered a way to repair damaged nerves by allowing the adult brain to respond to repair signals that are induced after injury.

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Dr Smith explained to Flair in an interview, that as we get older, we

lose the ability to repair damage to the brain and spinal cord, because our nervous system is actively preventing the immune system from sending out repair messages. If we get a cold, for example, the immune system kicks in and helps with our recovery.

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However, if our brain or spinal cord is damaged, this repair message is blocked. What they have discovered is that this mechanism is blocked by a molecule called SOCS3.
“In the absence of SOCS3, the damaged nerves were able to regenerate themselves in an adult.

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My hope is that the research will help people who suffer from brain and spinal-cord injuries by helping to repair the injuries they may have received in an accident, or just through the natural ageing process,” said Dr Smith.
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A curious child
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She said she has always been interested in how things work. As a child she was very good at taking apart small appliances and seeing whether she could put them back together.
Her interest in how the brain works began when she migrated to Canada, and took up a summer research job in a neuroscience lab at the University of Ottawa, Canada.
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Dr Smith grew up with her grandparents because her mother Elaine, was just 18 years old when she was born and had to move to Kingston to find work. Her mother later got married and migrated to Canada. Dr Smith joined her after completing her studies at Mannings High school in 1995 at the age of 18.
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Her CXC results were not recognised in Canada, so she had to repeat her final year in a Canadian high school. She excelled and obtained a scholarship to attend the University of Ottawa. She received the highest average in her graduating year and was awarded a medal by the Ottawa-Carleton education school board. “I felt that my Jamaican education provided a strong framework for this,” she told Flair.
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After completing her doctorate in 2005, she received a scholarship from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) to attend Harvard University, which was where she began her current research. The research took about two years to complete.

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“I am currently working on extending this research in my own lab back in Canada to look at ways of functionally repairing damaged nerves, following spinal cord and brain injury.”