Research Links

By Julie Steenhuysen
November 8, 2009

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Injecting tiny polymer spheres into rats right after a spinal cord injury helped the animals recover movement and prevented secondary nerve damage that often follows such injuries, U.S. researchers said on Sunday.

The experimental treatment uses spheres called copolymer micelles that fuse with injured nerve fibers and prevent inflammation...

[Date: 2009-10-26]

 A partly EU-funded team of UK and US researchers has identified an enzyme that plays a key role in the regeneration of nerve fibres (axons) after injury. Mammalian sterile 20-like kinase-3b (Mst3b) was shown to increase axon growth in the central nervous system (CNS) as well as the peripheral nervous system (PNS). The research results, now published in Nature Neuroscience, could open up new possibilities for treating stroke, spinal cord injuries and traumatic brain injury...

October 20 Pittsburgh Medical Technology ExaminerRuben Dagda

New discoveries in spinal cord regeneration research were unveiled by a superb panel of well known spinal cord investigators during a press conference at the 40th Society for Neuroscience conference in Chicago, Il. During the last ten years, animal research has suggested new ways to speed the recovery of damaged spinal cord in patients. New methodologies and techniques were discussed at today’s morning press conference which included ...

CHICAGO - A common antidepressant combined with an intensive treadmill training program helped people with partial spinal cord injuries walk better and faster, U.S. researchers said.

They said Forest Laboratories' antidepressant Lexapro or escitalopram, which affects a message-carrying brain chemical called serotonin, helps strengthen...

ScienceDaily (Oct. 16, 2009) — Scars can serve as double-edged swords in spinal cord injuries—saving a victim's life, but sealing his or her fate as a paraplegic or quadriplegic. The scar...

AHMEDABAD: In what is seen as a boost to the stem cell research in the country, India would soon get to host human clinical trials for therapies 
using umbilical blood cord (UBC) stem cell.

Chennai-based Apollo Hospital, America’s largest stem cell company StemCyte and Dr Wise Young, a leading expert on spinal cord injury, are in talks for conducting clinical trials in India...

BANGALORE, Aug 18 (Reuters) - Stem cell research company Geron Corp said U.S. health regulators have placed a clinical hold on its investigational new drug application for a cell therapy to treat subacute spinal cord injury...

Nature Neuroscience 12, 1106 - 1113 (2009)

Laura Taylor Alto1, Leif A Havton2, James M Conner1, Edmund R Hollis II1, Armin Blesch1 & Mark H Tuszynski1,3

Abstract  A principal objective of spinal cord injury (SCI) research is the restoration of axonal connectivity to denervated targets. We tested the hypothesis that chemotropic mechanisms would guide regenerating spinal cord axons to appropriate brainstem targets...