3/30/07

Julie M. Hasenwinkel, Ph.D. presents seminar to the Department of Biomedical Engineering

Bioengineering Approaches to Nerve Regeneration After Spinal Cord Injury: Understanding and Manipulating the Environment

There are approximately 250,000 spinal cord injured people living in the United States today, with nearly 12,000 new injuries occurring each year. Spinal cord injury (SCI), and the resulting paralysis, is not only physically and emotionally devastating for these patients and their families; the lifetime costs associated with caring for these individuals is significant as well. Nerve regeneration, to the point of functional recovery, fails in the spinal cord and central nervous system after injury. This is primarily due to the formation of the glial scar, which inhibits neuronal outgrowth due to the presence of a number of inhibitory molecules, including chondroitin sulfate proteoglycans (CSPGs). The glial scar has been cited as a biochemical and mechanical barrier to regeneration; however, the mechanism by which CSPGs inhibit neuronal outgrowth is unclear.

Our laboratory is exploring many aspects of this complex injury and our work is currently guided by the following questions:

1. How does the mechanical environment change in spinal cord tissue following injury, and does this correlate with biochemical changes at the site of the glial scar?
2. Can we modulate the environment, both from a biochemical and mechanical standpoint?
3. Can we promote regeneration by further optimizing the environment through the use of biomaterials-based substrates?

We are using a combination of microindentation techniques, nanosphere-based drug delivery, and mechanically-tuned, micropatterned hydrogels to explore these questions, in order to better understand spinal cord injury and develop therapies to treat it.