In a small laboratory tucked away on the third floor of the Science building at Mount Saint Vincent, Dr. James Haley, Associate Professor of Biology, is working on making connections.  Not the networking kind, but rather the kind of connections that could have significant implications for understanding what happens to key brain cells after injury.  As has been featured in the press in recent years as prominent celebrities have faced spinal cord injuries and nervous system diseases, identifying these key cell processes and how scientists may be able to alter them is a necessary precursor to truly understanding how the nervous system responds to trauma of various sort.   And understanding these processes would be an enormous step closer towards discovering ways to re-establish critical connections.

Dr. James Haley has a history of making connections.  He is a recognized leader in the field of neurobiology, with his research published in the Journal of Neurochemistry and various textbooks and manuals in experimental medicine.  In addition to teaching at Mount Saint Vincent, he is a visiting assistant professor in neurobiology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, where he has also worked in and collaborated on significant research projects.  In 2001, Dr. Haley was awarded a Major Research Instruments grant from the National Science Foundation to fund equipment necessary for his continued study of the interaction of astrocytes, glial cells believed to support neurons in the brain by providing nutrients for growth and maintenance of function.
 
In this most recent research using brain tissue from young rats, he has been working to identify what systems or events are triggered inside these brain cells, and related “second messenger cell cascades” such as IP3, after injury.   After brain trauma, astrocytes, instead of supporting neuronal activity, begin to reproduce wildly, forming a type of wall known as a glial scar.  Neurons are unable to reconnect, or reform contacts, over this wall of astrocytes, and are therefore prevented from healing.  By identifying means of preventing astrocytes from forming these walls, scientists hope to be closer to helping neurons reconnect, and return to normal activity.  Dr. Haley, and the research students working with him, created an in-vitro simulation of the “normal” brain system of rats.  Haley discovered that by adding neuronal membranes - axollema - to astrocyte cultures in the laboratory, the astrocytes stopped dividing and were prevented from forming glial walls.  It is believed that these studies may mimic cell activity in the human brain, and are a significant lead in the work towards re-establishing normal brain activity and healing.

Dr. Haley’s research with astrocytes has also focused on myelin, which support and aid neurons in their functions.  Astrocytes, in culture, have been found to eat and destroy myelin, probably contributing to the type of neuron destruction that occurs in the brain of persons with Multiple Sclerosis (MS).  At the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, some of Haley’s colleagues have shown that examination of actual brains with MS revealed that astrocytes do, in fact, participate in the destruction of myelin.  He hopes to further this aspect of his study through a grant from the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation, and current and future support he has received through a Howard Hughes Foundation grant.