Rebuilding spinal cords with an engineer's toolkit

(New Jersey Institute of Technology) Treena Arinzeh, director of NJIT's Tissue Engineering and Applied Biomaterials Lab, developed a tissue scaffold, made of an intrinsically energetic polymer, to coax nerve cells to extend axons over the damaged section of a spinal cord. In preclinical studies at the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, with Department of Defense backing, the technology is being tested in conjunction with Schwann cells from the peripheral nervous system that are implanted at the site of the injury.
Source: EurekAlert! - Medicine and Health - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: news