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Spinal Cord Repair: Progress Towards a Daunting Goal

Department of Neurology Yale University School of Medicine New Haven, Connecticut PVAlEPVA Center for Neuroscience Veterans Administration Medical Center West Haven, Connecticut

Jeffery D. Kocsis

Department of Neurology Yale University School of Medicine New Haven, Connecticut PVAlEPVA Center for Neuroscience Veterans Administration Medical Center West Haven, Connecticut

Research over the past decade has demonstrated that, under some circumstances, structural reorganization of the CNS, including the spinal cord, can occur after injury, raising hopes that spinal cord repair associated with functional recovery, although a daunting goal, may not be an unreachable one. This brief review dis cusses recent approaches to this problem: use of neurotrophins and the rerouting of axons within the transected spinal cord from white matter to gray matter through nerve grafts, and the transplantation of exogenous myelin-forming glial cells to spinal cord tracts in which myelin has been lost. Results available to date indicate that, in models mimicking some aspects of human spinal cord injury, these approaches may yield anatomical repair that is associated with partial restoration of physiological and behavioral func tion. Many important questions remain unanswered. Nevertheless, although the clinical goal of repairing spinal cords in humans is a very challenging one, results in animal models suggest that spinal cord repair is a realistic objective and provide a glimpse of what is likely to be a period of rapid progress. NEURO SCIENTIST 3:263-269, 1997

Key Words: KEY WORDS Neurotrophins • FGF • Cell transplantation • Glial cells • Schwann cells • White matter • Gray matter • Myelination

The Neuroscientist, Vol. 3, No. 4, 263-269 (1997)
DOI: 10.1177/107385849700300414


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