Growth factor may facilitate spinal cord repair

Researchers from King’s College London (KCL) and the University of Oxford (UK) have demonstrated that neuregulin-1 (Nrg1) signaling may be crucial for spontaneous spinal cord repair in mice following injury. This new research, published last week in Brain, raises possibilities for new clinical treatments for patients affected by traumatic spinal cord injury, of whom there are more than 130,000 new cases each year. While there is currently no cure, this new finding points towards treatments that may enhance the CNS’s limited endogenous repair systems. Following traumatic spinal cord injury, spinal axons undergo acute demyelination, which is then followed by a...