New therapy spurs nerve fibers to regrow through scar tissue, transmit signals after spinal cord injury in rodents

Neuroscientists at UCLA, Harvard University and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have identified a three-pronged treatment that triggers axons — the tiny fibers that link nerve cells and enable them to communicate — to regrow after spinal cord injury in rodents. Not only did the axons grow through scars, they could also transmit signals across the damaged tissue.If researchers can produce similar results in human studies,  the findings could lead to a therapy to regrow axon connections in  people living with spinal cord injury, potentially restoring function. Nature publishes the research in its Aug. 29 online edition.“The idea was to deliver a sequence of three very different treatments and test whether the combination could stimulate disconnected axons to regrow across the scar in the injured spinal cord,” said lead author Michael Sofroniew, a professor of  neurobiology  at the  David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “Previous studies had tested each of the three treatments separately, but never together. The combination proved to be the key.”When people injure their spinal cords, it damages the axons and prevents the brain from sending signals to neurons below the injury site. This leads to paralysis and the loss of other neurological functions, such as bladder control and hand strength. The UCLA approach could provide the first step to solving this problem.According to Sofroniew, many decades of research have shown that a human ’s nerve fib...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news