The finding is important because it is a first step in laboratory animal models that will help scientists refine and improve nerve repair and regrowth in spinal cord injuries. While much basic science remains to be completed, this path of discovery could possibly lead one day to new therapies to reverse paralysis in human patients who have suffered complete spinal cord injury. The findings will be presented April 30 in San Francisco at the American Academy of Neurology annual meeting.
Significance of the Mayo Clinic Finding
This new regrowth measurement method and evaluating conditions of the spinal microenvironment in which regrowth occurs extend earlier Mayo Clinic research. In the earlier research the team successfully regenerated healthy spinal nerve endings of paralyzed rats using an implantable scaffolding. The scaffolding is referred to as a "biodegradable spinal graft."
Mayo Clinic's experimental scaffolding consists of several innovations. It uses polymer chemistry to create a biodegradable material that can be molded, through microfabrication techniques, to make implantable, trellis-like scaffolding that both supports and guides new nerve fibers. It does this by providing channels through which the axons (nerve endings) grow.
The new measurement method shows that the scaffolding not only supports axon regeneration when seeded with cells that stimulate regrowth, but that it can quantify axon growth under different experimental conditions. "Knowing what conditions favor regrowth -- or retard it -- enables researchers to design a maximally efficient system for achieving the best regrowth," says Anthony Windebank, M.D., neurologist, molecular
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Contact: John Murphy
newsbureau@mayo.edu
507-284-5005
Mayo Clinic
30-Apr-2004