Using a combination of therapies and cell grafts, a team of University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine researchers has promoted significant regeneration of nerve cells in rats with spinal cord injury. The therapeutic approach successfully stimulated new nerve fibers called axons to grow and extend well beyond the site of the injury into surrounding tissue, following surgically induced spinal cord damage.These results prove that combinational therapy can promote the vigorous growth of new axons even after a complete lesion of the spinal cord cells, with the new growth extending through implanted tissue grafts, and into the spinal cord and healthy tissue surrounding the injury site, according to Mark Tuszynski, M.D., Ph.D., professor of neurosciences at UCSD and senior author of the study. The paper is published in the July 14 issue of the Journal of Neurosciences.
