Researchers from the Mayo Clinic in New York have demonstrated that implantation of a biomaterial scaffold designed to bridge the lesion caused by a spinal cord injury improves nerve regeneration. Seeding the scaffold with Schwann cells did not provide a significant benefit. Future research to discover therapeutic agents able to block the fibrotic response to these scaffolds could improve their ability to bridge spinal cord lesions.
Study published in the peer-reviewed journal Tissue Engineering.