Spinal Cord Injury

A special issue of Brain Sciences (ISSN 2076-3425). This special issue belongs to the section "Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 June 2025 | Viewed by 1252

Special Issue Editors


E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Neurosciences, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA
Interests: stem cells; gene therapy; spinal cord injury; Alzheimer’s disease; neurotrophic factors

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Neurosciences, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA
Interests: stem cells; spinal cord injury; neurotrophic factors

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

After more than a century of research into axonal regeneration after CNS injury, effective therapies promoting neural repair are still lacking. However, the field is making progress, and we are nearing this goal thanks to stem cells, neurotrophic factors, inhibitory extracellular matrix degradation, and clinical trials involving a variety of drug-based approaches for altering the intrinsic cellular state and excitability.

This Special Issue will address many of these approaches, alongside efforts to translate them to human clinical trials. It will also cover how the use of the best pre-clinical spinal cord injury models in a manner mimicking clinical trial protocols can enhance the probability of success, together with well-designed clinical trials. We hope that this Special Issue will be informative in relaying the state of the field.

Prof. Dr. Mark H. Tuszynski
Dr. Paul Lu
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • spinal cord injury
  • axonal regeneration
  • neural stem cells
  • neural progenitor cells
  • synaptic connection
  • neuronal relay

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

16 pages, 4307 KiB  
Article
Conditioning Electrical Nerve Stimulation Enhances Functional Rewiring in a Mouse Model of Nerve Transfer to Treat Chronic Spinal Cord Injury
by Juan Sebastián Jara, Marwa A. Soliman, Amanda Bernstein, Paola di Grazia, Adam R. Ferguson, Justin M. Brown, Abel Torres-Espín and Edmund R. Hollis
Brain Sci. 2025, 15(3), 251; https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci15030251 - 27 Feb 2025
Viewed by 931
Abstract
Background/Objectives: Nerve transfer surgery is a state-of-the-art surgical approach to restore hand and arm function in individuals living with tetraplegia, significantly impacting daily life. While nearly a third of all individuals with chronic spinal cord injury may benefit from this intervention, variability in [...] Read more.
Background/Objectives: Nerve transfer surgery is a state-of-the-art surgical approach to restore hand and arm function in individuals living with tetraplegia, significantly impacting daily life. While nearly a third of all individuals with chronic spinal cord injury may benefit from this intervention, variability in outcomes can limit the functional impact. A bedside to bench approach was taken to address the variable response of tetraplegic individuals to nerve transfer surgery. Methods: We used a hierarchical multiple factor analysis to evaluate the effects of conditioning electrical stimulation (CES) on outcomes in a mouse model of nerve transfer to treat chronic cervical spinal cord injury. Results: We found that CES of donor nerves one week prior to nerve transfer surgery enhanced anatomical and functional measures of innervation of targeted muscles. Furthermore, CES increased the rate of recovery of naturalistic behavior. Conclusions: While the model has some limitations due to the small size of the rodent, our results support the use of CES as an effective approach to improve outcomes in clinical nerve repair settings. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Spinal Cord Injury)
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