Spinal Cord Regenerator

A new drug is currently being tested on animals that may someday help reverse paralysis in people with spinal cord injury. But the discovery didn’t occur exactly the way researchers were expecting.

It started 30 years ago with the discovery that a substance called a proteoglycan essentially functioned to “glue” severed nerves to scar tissue, effectively acting as a barrier to prevent nerves from growing where they weren’t supposed to. It took ten more years of research to convince the rest of the scientific community, but the real breakthrough occurred when it was discovered the full extent to which proteoglycans play a part in paralysis.

So the goal became to develop a drug that could release the trapped fibers, enabling them to regenerate. After getting it to work in a Petri dish, it was tested on rats suffering from spinal injuries that left them with limb paralysis and lack of bladder control. Seven weeks of injections produced no results, but two to three weeks later, they started to show improvement. Eventually all of the rats regained some control of their bladder and one-third were able to walk again. But the function was not restored as a result of reconnecting nerves. Instead, the nerves were sprouting all over the place which flooded the spinal column with serotonin. It was this increased supply of serotonin that amplified the signal from just a few intact nerves.

This represents an important step forward in paralysis research, especially since the drug itself can be administered as an injection under the skin. Other treatments, like stem cells, carry greater risk due to their invasive nature.