There is currently no way to completely reverse the damage and paralysis that results from a spinal cord injury. One of the biggest obstacles is that neurons die and can’t regrow across the damage.
Now, researchers have developed a biomedical structure that has given impressive functional recovery to lab rats with severed spinal cords. The team detailed their success in a study published in the journal Advanced Healthcare Materials.
“Within the United States, SCI [spinal cord injury] has affected a significant number of individuals…with estimates ranging from 255,000 to 383,000 persons,” the researchers wrote in the study. “Unfortunately, there are no treatments currently available for SCI.”
That could all change. The team created a scaffold with tiny channels, which they then populate