First time in history corticospinal axons grown

Incredible first: corticospinal axons (in red) show growth on injured mouse spinal cord.

A group of nerves in the spinal cord controls voluntary movement. These nerves are called the corticospinal tract or CST. The reason that people remain paralyzed after spinal cord injury is that the CST cannot regenerate.

For the first time in history, Zhigang He, Ph.D., B.M., at Harvard University has caused massive regeneration of axons in the CST.

Ben Barres, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of neurology and neurological sciences at Stanford University, who studies axonal regeneration, called Dr. He’s study a landmark. “To see this work, to see Central Nervous System neurons growing through glia (which express inhibitory molecules) so robustly, there is nothing that has been done that is comparable. It is just amazing,” he said.

Oswald Steward, Ph.D., Director of the Reeve Irvine Research Center at UC Irvine, helped to confirm the validity of the breakthrough and continues to collaborate with Dr. He to move this research forward.