Clearing out the spinal cord scar using a bacterial roto-rooter; seeding the injury site with fragments of peripheral nerve; souping up inactive spinal cord nerve cells by modifying their genetic blueprints – these are three well-studied ideas that have each captured major mindshare in the spinal cord research community, and have become part of the inventory of hope for people with paralysis.
Now comes a new paper from the Veronica Tom lab at Drexel in Philadelphia. She simultaneously employs all three concepts to power up spinal cord regeneration – in a completely cut, transection model – by digesting the scar barrier with chondroitinase; by adding a growth support matrix using peripheral nerve grafts at the injury site; and by delivering a new gene code to trick axons into thinking they are young again.
The paper was published in the Journal of Neuroscience.