For first time, researchers show functional benefit in animal model of key motor control system called the corticospinal tract.
Source Newsroom: University of California, San Diego Health .
Mark Tuszynski, MD, PhD, professor in the UC San Diego School of Medicine Department of Neurosciences and director of the UC San Diego Translational Neuroscience Institute.
“The corticospinal projection is the most important motor system in humans,” said senior study author Mark Tuszynski, MD, PhD, professor in the UC San Diego School of Medicine Department of Neurosciences and director of the UC San Diego Translational Neuroscience Institute. “It has not been successfully regenerated before. Many have tried, many have failed – including us, in previous efforts. The new thing here was that we used neural stem cells for the first time to determine whether they, unlike any other cell type tested, would support regeneration. And to our surprise, they did.”
Specifically, the researchers grafted multipotent neural progenitor cells into sites of spinal cord injury in rats. The stem cells were directed to specifically develop as a spinal cord, and they did so robustly, forming functional synapses that improved forelimb movements in the rats. The feat upends an existing belief that corticospinal neurons lacked internal mechanisms needed for regeneration. Previous studies have reported functional recovery in rats following various therapies for spinal cord injury, but none had involved regeneration of corticospinal axons. In humans, the corticospinal tract extends from the cerebral cortex in the upper brain down into the spinal cord.
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SPINAL CORD INJURY RESEARCH AND SCIENCE 