Growing expectations

Twenty years ago, it was widely believed that spinal cord injury was incurable as it was impossible to regenerate the spinal cord. However, advances over the last ten years have led to growing optimism within the scientific community and raised new expectations for people with spinal cord injuries.

Not if, but when

This optimism is fuelled by a range of factors, including:

• Greater understanding of the initial and secondary damage caused by spinal cord injury
• The discovery of proteins that inhibit and support nerve regeneration
• The number of new therapies that successfully support regeneration and/or remyelination in animal models of spinal cord injury
• The realisation that regeneration of fewer than 10 per cent of the injured axons in the spinal cord is needed to support substantial functional recovery.

The major question now is not if, but when, effective therapies for spinal cord injury will be available.

Unprecedented urgency

Worldwide charitable organisations and spinal-cord-injured communities have worked tirelessly to fund research that has led to the recent significant progress made in spinal cord injury regeneration and rehabilitation. As a result, there is an unprecedented level of urgency to identify and fund the most promising therapies for spinal cord injury and to accelerate clinical trials for them. If this can be done, the hopes of the Nicholls family and hundreds of thousands of others to restore function in paralysed people can be turned into reality. 

Juanita J. Anders, PhD Associate Professor of Anatomy, Physiology and Genetics, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences Bethesda, Maryland