Spinal cord regeneration

Research in spinal cord regeneration is catching attention of clinicians and basic scientists. It would almost revolutionise the life and disease outcome of these unfortunate patients if we can work out a cost effective and practical treatment regimen for these victims who are unfortunately in the prime of their productive years. It was gratifying to learn that nerves in peripheral nervous system (PNS), which are outside the brain or spinal cord, did regrow. It is exciting to learn that the prospects of regrowth of spinal cord improves when these PNS cells are implanted in damaged spinal cord. Spinal cord injury is a global epidemic. A lot of research is going on in this field. Axonal regeneration, electric stimulation, Netrins, stem cells etc are few exciting fields in the area of research. It is ongoing research whereby the ability to grow human motor neurons in the laboratory will provide new insights into disease processes and could be used as alternative to animal models for finding therapeutic targets and testing drugs.