Spinal cord injuries can affect patients’ ability to feel or move parts of their body below the injury. Spinal cord nerves have a very limited ability to regrow, so damage is often permanent, and there are currently no effective treatments.
The new findings, published in the journal Brain, are the culmination of years of research by a team at Imperial College London and the University of Tuebingen to understand the mechanisms that stop damaged nerves from repairing themselves.
These results in mice are very encouraging, but they need to be replicated in further studies in animals.
– Professor Simone di Giovanni
Department of Medicine
Mice treated with a placebo made only a slight recovery in their movement ability after a spinal cord injury. Mice treated with nutlins made a much stronger recovery, achieving higher scores on tests assessing their movement.
Professor Simone di Giovanni, from the Department of Medicine at Imperial College London, who led the study, said: “Unlike in the limbs, nerves in the spinal cord don’t regenerate after an injury. We’re only just beginning to understand the fundamental reasons for this striking difference.
“We have identified a mechanism that controls nerve regeneration, and there are already experimental drugs that target this pathway, suggesting an opportunity to translate these findings into the clinic. These results in mice are very encouraging, but they need to be replicated in further studies in animals. If the next results show the treatment is effective, it would provide a good justification for a clinical trial in patients with spinal cord injury.”