Regenerative Medicine: ?Spinal Cord Injury Repair?

HR QUINTÁ

Seminario; University of Minnestota, Medical School. Grand Round lecture; 2020

For decades, dynamic and sequentialassociation between axon regeneration and recovery of voluntary control oflocomotion has been considered the Holy Grail for spinal cord injury (SCI)repair. The ?key? has been thought to be the long-distance regeneration of themotor and sensory tracts that are interrupted by SCI, and subsequentre-connection to appropriate target spinal neurons to achieve functionallocomotor restoration. However, despite substantial efforts devoted worldwidein this direction, even the most promising results in the field have onlyachieved axonal regeneration without a subsequent significant improvement inlocomotor function. This highlights that the field is still far from developingan effective treatment to promote functional re-growth of axonal tracts toachieve recovery of paralysis, restoration of autonomic function and re-gain ofsensation. The main question remains of whetherit is essential to achieve long distance regeneration of descending tracts toimprove or re-gain the locomotor function previously lost.From a pathological standpoint,descending axonal tracts are affected depending on the type and severity of thelesion and the time/stage after injury (acute, sub-acute and chronic). In this context, my long term goal asa young SCI researcher is to develop a new approach to promote the recovery ofvoluntary control of locomotion.