What's In a Name? Part Deux

As of late, I have been getting a lot of medical spam. I scanned the fine print of one of these e-mails yesterday and at the end, I noticed it read "You are getting this email because you have printed an article or an abstract in such and such journal." I was largely put off by the whole thing because, in fact, I hadn't published an article in Such and Such journal.

Then at work yesterday, something came up and I had to do a PubMed search about my former lab at Stanford. Guess what? Turns out I actually do have a publication in a journal called Brain Research. And I never even knew. The only issue is that they misspelled my last name; adding an extra "o." My God, the indignity!

Here's a link to the article.

Gene therapy in the nervous system with superoxide dismutase.

Abstract:

Neuronal death following necrotic insults involves the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). We investigated the effects of antioxidant gene therapy on ROS accumulation after exposure to either sodium cyanide, kainic acid or oxygen glucose deprivation (OGD). Specifically, we generated herpes simplex virus-1 amplicon vector expressing the gene for the antioxidant enzyme CuZnSOD. Overexpression of this gene in primary hippocampal cultures resulted in increased enzymatic activity of the corresponding protein. CuZnSOD significantly protected hippocampal neurons against sodium cyanide insult and the subsequent lipid peroxidation. However, it did not protect against OGD- or kainic-acid-induced toxicity. Moreover, CuZnSOD significantly worsened the toxicity, hydrogen peroxide accumulation and lipid peroxidation induced by kainic acid. As a possible explanation for this surprising worsening, CuZnSOD overexpression increased glutathione peroxidase activity in the presence of sodium cyanide but had no effect on catalase or glutathione peroxidase activity in the presence of kainic acid. Thus, cells were unlikely to be able to detoxify the excess hydrogen peroxide produced as a result of the CuZnSOD overexpression. These studies can be viewed as a cautionary note concerning gene therapy intervention against necrotic insults.