Abstract
The past 30 years of research in spinal cord injury (SCI) have revealed that, under certain conditions, some types of axons are able to regenerate. To aid these axons in bridging the lesion site, many experimenters place cellular grafts at the lesion. However, to increase the potential for functional recovery, it is likely advantageous to maximize the number of axons that reach the intact spinal cord on the other side of the lesion. Implanting linear-channeled scaffolds at the lesion site provides growing axons with linear growth paths, which minimizes the distance they must travel to reach healthy tissue. Moreover, the linear channels help the regenerating axons maintain the correct mediolateral and dorsoventral position in the spinal cord, which may also improve functional recovery by keeping the axons nearer to their correct targets. Here, we provide a protocol to perform a full spinal cord transection in rats that accommodates an implanted scaffold.
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Acknowledgements
This work is supported by NIH RO1-EBO14986, NIH R01-NS042291, NIH-NS067092, VA B7332R, Roman Reed Spinal Cord Injury Research Program of the State of California 10-274, the Dr. Miriam & Sheldon G. Adelson Medical Research Foundation, and the Bernard and Anne Spitzer Charitable Trust.
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Koffler, J., Samara, R.F., Rosenzweig, E.S. (2014). Using Templated Agarose Scaffolds to Promote Axon Regeneration Through Sites of Spinal Cord Injury. In: Murray, A. (eds) Axon Growth and Regeneration. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1162. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-0777-9_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-0777-9_13
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Publisher Name: Humana Press, New York, NY
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