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The research team, based at RCSI and Amber, collaborated with co-sponsor Irish Rugby Football Union Charitable Trust on the project.
A team of Irish researchers has developed a 3D-printed implant that emits electric signals to boost the regrowth of injured nerve cells following a spinal cord injury.
Spinal cord injury can be a debilitating condition to live with, often causing paralysis in patients. There are more than 2,100 people living with a spinal cord injury in Ireland. Following injury, long axonal projections of nerve cells or neurons are cut and ‘die-back’ from the injury site. At the same time, a lesion forms at the wound that prevents their regrowth necessary to restore function.
To address this complex problem, the team comprising of researchers based at RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, and Amber, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Advanced Materials and Bioengineering in Trinity College Dublin, have developed an implantable, electroconductive 3D-printed scaffold that can be placed directly into the injury site.
“Bridging the lesion with an electroconductive biomaterial designed to mimic the structure of the spinal cord, combined with the application of electrical stimulation, may help injured neurons regrow their axons and reconnect to restore function,” said Prof Fergal O’Brien, who is the head of RCSI’s Tissue Engineering Research Group. “No such platform exists to date.”
Details of the implant and its promising results in lab experiments were published today (28 August) in the journal Materials Today.
“To date, it has been extremely difficult to promote the regrowth of neurons after spinal cord injury, which is a major obstacle in the development of successful treatments for such debilitating injuries,” explained O’Brien, who is also deputy director of Amber. “Our research here represents a promising new approach which may have potential for the treatment of spinal cord injuries.”
The research team collaborated with co-sponsor Irish Rugby Football Union Charitable Trust on the project, bringing together a spinal cord injury advisory group to oversee and guide the research, including clinicians, individuals living with spinal cord injury, as well as public and patient involvement researchers.
The project was also supported by the Irish Research Council and its findings were recently presented at the TERMIS World Congress in Seattle, Washington.
“We could see that when we applied electrical stimulation for a week to neurons growing on this scaffold, they developed long, healthy extensions called neurites,” said Liam Leahy, first author of the study and PhD candidate at RCSI. “In the body, this kind of growth would be a key step towards repair and recovery after an injury.”
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