By University of California – The Guardian
UC San Diego School of Medicine’s Translational Neuroscience Institute made its latest breakthrough in the treatment of spinal cord injuries after the culmination of 30 years of research. In a paper published on Aug. 22, a team of researchers led by Dr. Mark Tuszynski used rats as a model to find that STEM cells could significantly impact the rehabilitation and repair of injured spinal cords.
“It’s very challenging to try and regenerate the injured spinal cord; the central nervous system doesn’t regenerate naturally very well,” Tuszynski said. “Axons are not typically capable of regrowing when they have been cut. But there have been some recent breakthroughs that have been encouraging, and one of them is the use of stem cells.”