Spinal Cord Injury Repair

Neuromics has featured an overview of Dr. Matt Ramer's Research on Spinal Cord Injury and "Finding Fixes for Injured Nerves" on our Neuroscience News Blog.

We wanted to share a recent publication authored by Dr. Mark Tuszynski and his team of researchers at USCD. Here's the good news:

"NT-3 expression in the correct target led to reinnervation of the nucleus gracilis in a dose-related fashion, whereas NT-3 expression in the reticular formation led to mistargeting of regenerating axons. Axons regenerating into the nucleus gracilis formed axodendritic synapses containing rounded vesicles, reflective of pre-injury synaptic architecture. Thus, we report for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, the reinnervation of brainstem targets after SCI and an essential role for chemotropic axon guidance in target selection"

Laura Taylor Alto, Leif A Havton, James M Conner, Edmund R Hollis II, Armin Blesch & Mark H Tuszynski. Chemotropic guidance facilitates axonal regeneration and synapse formation after spinal cord injury. Nature Neuroscience. Published online: 2 August 2009 doi:10.1038/nn.2365.

Featured Neuromics Reagent
NT-3
Related Reagents:
Neurotrophins and Growth Factor Antibodies
Neuron/Glial Marker Antibodies
Neurotrophins-Neuron/Glial Marker Proteins
Stem Cell Reagents

Here's to finding the cure!