Jell-O and Spinal Cord Injuries!

[Coded-Dude]

Stem cells embedded in futuristic materials may heal decades-old spinal cord injuries and rescue patients from paralysis, if recent experiments in rodents can be replicated in humans.

Stem cells have cured many rats of spinal cord injuries, but the treatment has yet to benefit humans. When it does, most scientists say the first treatments will benefit only the newly injured.

But Pavla Jendelova, a biologist at the Institute of Experimental Medicine in Prague, Czech Republic, found that adding stem cells to spinal implants made of hydrogels -- jelly-like polymers consisting of latticed networks of amino acids -- could build a bridge in spinal cords even with older injuries, and help patients to regain function.

"In chronic spinal cord injuries, there's a large cavity that develops over time in the injured area," she said. "We want to see if the hydrogels can breach this gap."

Hydrogels resemble the soft tissue that surrounds a human spinal cord as it develops in the womb, Jendelova said. Neurons grow through pores in the material, creating a scaffold that supports delicate cells. The pores are also large enough to allow the transmission of chemical signals that orchestrate neural development.

Jendelova believes hydrogels' physical properties, which are similar to those of Jell-O, increase the likelihood that stem cells will integrate successfully with existing spinal tissue.

"An ideal matrix for neurons would be soft, chemically inert and would have a high water content like a sponge -- something that resembles the natural environment around developing neural tissue," she said. Made of up to 99 percent water, hydrogels come closer to meeting these criteria than any other artificial material.

The Institute of Experimental Medicine team induced spinal cord lesions in 28 rats by removing small sections of the cord or compressing spinal cord tissue. They then filled the spinal cavity around the injured area with blocks of hydrogel laced with stem cells from rat bone marrow.

Four weeks later, the scientists analyzed the treated areas and found that the stem cells had successfully built new spinal cord tissue with nerve fibers that grew through the gaps in the hydrogel's amino-acid lattice. "We observed significant growth of neural tissue into the hydrogels," Jendelova said. "There were neurofilaments, axons and connective tissue growing into the whole area of the lesion."

Not only did the rats show unprecedented neural regrowth, they also recovered much of the limb function they had lost when the researchers initially injured them. Jendelova presented her findings last month at the Cambridge Healthtech Institute's molecular medicine conference in San Francisco.

"If you create a physical architecture, cells will often follow it," said Erin Lavik, a biomedical engineer at Yale University who is developing hydrogels that can be used as matrices to build blood vessel networks. The technique could prove crucial in tissue and spinal cord repair procedures.

Scientists have also tried nanofibers as frameworks for stem cell growth, Lavik said, but because they are engineered to be strong and tough, they are less flexible and don't readily mold to a lesion.

WIRED NEWS
NOTE: this is only half of the article

If only Superman could have held on a little longer..........

[WolfmanNCSU]

Wow, that can really help a lot of patients!

[Mathx]

And seeing that they can perform this using synthetic material along with Stem Cells from Bone Marrow, it will be able to help ppl in the medical community without the stemcells from aborted fetuses ethical debate.(you touch on this here your post will be deleted, read the article)

[D3adcell]

It would be great if they got it into working practice sometime in the near future. I remember they were saying they could create new organs out of that research. I still wait for that day.