Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

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Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

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Profs pioneer gel to heal spinal cord, neural tissue

Researchers at the Feinberg School of Medicine have started to use an engineered gel to spur the growth of nerve cells, a promising step toward reversing spinal cord injury and other neurological ailments.

Materials science and engineering Prof. Samuel Stupp and neurology Prof. John Kessler led the study, which was published Friday online in the journal Science.

The project involved using nanotechnology to micro-engineer a gel that promotes growth among neural stem cells — sketching out a procedure that could eventually be used for regrowing lost or damaged spinal cord or brain cells.

“I would be very, very, very surprised if, 10 years from now, we’re not using these treatments in human beings,” Kessler said. “But I would also be really surprised if this treatment is available in two years.”

Cells in the central nervous system — the brain and spinal cord — are unique in how they cannot replicate themselves in their mature state the way other cells can. This is why recovery prospects are often so dim for patients with spinal cord injury or brain damage.

Because of this, research into materials that prod stem cell growth are all the more important, Kessler said, calling the growth he and Stupp induced “remarkable.”

“It should be useful for regeneration anywhere in the brain or in the central nervous system,” he said, “and it shouldn’t matter what created the damage.”

The next step is to test the procedure on rats, injecting the stem-cell gel solution into damaged spinal cords, Kessler said. That research, headed by Kessler, is already underway.

Kessler said the nano-engineered gel is one of the project’s most important innovations. The gel works, he said, by wedging its way into the “extracellular space” between the nerve cells.

“Suppose you were to take a can of tennis balls and think of the tennis balls as cells,” Kessler said. “All of the air that’s in the can is the space that’s surrounding those tennis balls — that in the body is the extracellular space.”

Filling that space in the proper way is precisely what led the stem cells to grow, he said.

For years scientists have been heralding the promise of stem cells in treating everything from paralysis to Parkinson’s disease, making research into stem cell treatment more noteworthy, said Susan Howley, director of research at the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation, which sponsors research on treatment for paralysis.

“There is a very, very large population of chronically injured, diseased people,” Howley said. “So this is really where regeneration comes into play. Because once those cells are killed by the injury or disease, the great challenge — the Holy Grail if you will — is regeneration. (This is) how we get new, replacement cells.”

Howley said about 250,000 Americans suffer from spinal-cord injury. Treatment is slow, hard and relatively primitive — limited strictly to physical therapy and rehabilitation.

Any treatment that might lead to the regrowth of damaged nerve cells holds tremendous promise, Howley said, because it could potentially mean a reversal of symptoms among patients who suffer from spinal cord damage or other neurological ailments.

“We are thrilled,” said Andrew Lovinger, director of the polymers program at the National Science Foundation, the branch at NSF that sponsored the study. “I think that this is a very significant pioneering work and it is something that brings together Sam Stupp’s creativity in chemistry and materials science and applies it to a critically important problem in medicine.”

The Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health also supported the study.

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Profs pioneer gel to heal spinal cord, neural tissue