In the ‘Good Health’ Section of the Daily Maily, 22/01/19, there was an article about an incredibly exciting new technology that could potentially change the lives of patient’s with spinal cord injuries. Spinal cord injuries can result in patients being paralysed, doubly incontinent and in some cases are fatal.
Scientists at the University of California in San Diego have developed a new technique that uses 3-D printers to create a ‘scaffolding’ or support for the spinal cord at the level of the injury which is then filled with stem cells. Stem cells are non-specialised cells and they have the unique ability to develop into different specialised cell types in the body. All cells originate from stem cells before becoming specialised for their individual functions.
In the experiments carried out at the University of California, the stem cells placed next to the spinal cord injury developed into central nervous system tissue after a few months. These experiments have so far only been carried out rats however after a few months the new nervous system tissue had grown across the rats’ spinal cord injuries and “reconnected the severed ends of the spinal cord”. The rats regained significant movement in their back legs.
This is very exciting new technology and I am fascinated to know what the ‘matrix’ or material the researchers have used in the 3-D printer to make the supportive scaffolding which is implanted around the spinal cord. Spinal injuries are catastrophic injuries that we currently have no way of repairing and this gives us hope that we are getting near to a cure for spinal injuries.
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