SPINAL CORD SOCIETY
19051 COUNTY HWY 1
FERGUS FALLS, MN 56537
(218)739-5252
(218)739-5262 Fax
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Most cure organizations you may be familiar with are actually contracting with some university. That’s how SCS used to have to do business also. While there is nothing intrinsically wrong with that setup, it does have several drawbacks that are detrimental to our objective. On the other hand, being in control of our own center gives us several distinct advantages.
Their researchers work for the university. That usually means they have classes to teach, meetings to attend and are subject to the universities policies and agenda; which may not be the same as yours. Our researchers only have one thing to concentrate on, all day every day; finding a cure for spinal cord injury. And if they aren’t doing the job we expect of them, we can replace them!
Not so for the university. They have many other priorities and cure is not necessarily one of them.
Most universities, because they are public institutions, are likely limited to doing research that has broad applications across a wide spectrum of maladies. That is called basic research. The same is true of government institutions such as the National Institutes of Health and at many places that take government funding. At SCS, because we are independently funded, we take this basic research and apply it specifically to spinal cord injury. That is called applied research.
We don’t’ suffer from the “not invented here” syndrome, We will take any research available if it’s showing promise and then we combine it with the other things we have been developing
Spinal cord injury is complex and there are many factors that have to be overcome. Among these are- Getting nerves to regenerate; replacing neurons that are lost due to injury; eliminating and suppressing the reformation of the scar tissue that forms on the damaged nerves; blocking the natural growth inhibitors that take over in the damaged spinal cord. Unfortunately, it appears there will be no “silver bullet” that solves all of these problems. It’s going to take a combination of approaches to form a complete treatment for the adult, chronic spinal cord injury.
Most of the research being done today is on the “acute” injury. That is, an injury that is only a few hours or a few days old. The problem is, none of us was hurt just a few hours or a few days ago. Even if you were hurt yesterday, a cure treatment would likely have to wait until the trauma subsided before it could be applied. By then you’d be chronic anyway, with all its associated complications. We need to be concentrating on a cure that will actually work on the people who need it. That is what SCS has insisted on right from the beginning.
Spinal cord injury is a complex repair job requiring a combination of therapies to complete it. With genetic engineering we feel we could soon be on the threshold of a cure. Most of the work we are doing in our lab these days is geared toward being able to get it into human trials as soon as possible. Here are some of the areas we are hard at work on.
In most cases, new neurons (mature nerve cells) will have to be grown to replace those lost due to injury. This is where stem cells are a very promising answer to this part of the puzzle and we have always been a leader in applying them to spinal cord injury.
The biggest news in recent years on this front has been the use of olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs) as used by Dr. Carlos Lima in Portugal. Ever since he made news with his human trials using OECs we have been working to refine and improve his procedure. One thing we’re doing is making a combination of OECs and Schwann cells which we believe will be a mutually supportive mixture that will greatly enhance the regenerative properties of both.
One of the biggest problems we face in dealing with the chronic injury is getting rid of the scar tissue that forms on the damaged spinal cord. Neurons can’t grow through this scar tissue so it is essential to remove it without doing further damage. Of the few places that are even dealing with the scar problem, most are just cutting it away with a scalpel. The problem is, that is akin to using a jackhammer to clean your teeth. A much more refined method will have to be found.
We have developed just such a method that uses a photo-toxic dye that is injected into the scar tissue. A specific type of light is then shined on this dye which destroys the scar while leaving the healthy tissue undamaged. The whole thing can be done through a tiny probe inserted into the injured area. This is a big step forward, not only for the human application, but, because of its much smaller size, this is the only method that can be effectively used on rats. That will make for much more effective testing of our other components.
A further complication with the scar is that, once eliminated it just grows back, even denser than before. In order to give a cure treatment time to do its job this return of the scar will have to be stopped, or at least postponed. We are working on several approaches which are showing promise in solving this problem.
After injury, the body makes an unsuccessful attempt to cure the spinal cord. Much work has been done to identify and manipulate the growth factors involved in this attempt. Also, after injury the spinal cord is flooded with molecules which inhibit nerve growth, which is what prevents this cure attempt from being successful. It will be necessary to identify these inhibitors and find ways to suppress them.
In order for cure treatment to work, it will need a permissive environment free of inhibitors and boosted by growth promoters. This is another area where we and others have made and are making great strides.
Our goal is to design all our treatments so they can be delivered as non-invasively as possible. Ideally, all treatments will be delivered by injection directly to the injury site, preferably through the same probe being used for the scar removal. This will reduce or eliminate much of the costly, and possibly even dangerous, surgery that is the norm in other current cure trials. This will lead to a cure which should be cheaper, safer, more effective and quicker to recover from than what many people are contemplating today.
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