The National
Spinal Cord
Injury Association

Disability in the News.

Study sheds light on reversing paralysis

University of Miami researchers have discovered that cells from the olfactory nerve in the nose, which carries smell signals to the brain, can help generate new nerve growth in damaged or severed spinal cords.

Findings by UM's Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, reported in the Journal of Neuroscience in May, provide a new avenue for inquiry in the worldwide efforts to develop a method to reverse spinal cord damage.

Paralysis is irreversible because nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord do not regenerate naturally. Healthy nerve fibers act like electrical circuits, carrying messages to and from the brain. Serious spinal cord injury interrupts the circuits, and so far, scientists have been unable to devise a way to stimulate the nerve fibers to reconnect and restore the circuit.

The most promising strategies have involved transplanting cells from other parts of the nervous system that do regenerate, particularly "peripheral nerves," which run to the muscles of the arms and legs.

Researchers have succeeded at getting such nerve fibers to regenerate within implants from peripheral nerves. But proteins in the spinal cord usually prevent the regenerated nerve fibers from growing into the spinal cord and connecting with nerve cells beyond the point of injury.

In research with laboratory rats, Mary Bartlett Bunge and Miami Project colleagues found that olfactory nerve cells are able to grow through the proteins that normally block nerve growth. As the olfactory cells progress into the spinal cord, the nerve fibers grow with them. Nerve fibers grew two inches into the rats' spinal cords, researchers found.  
 

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