Irish researchers develop implant to power healing after spinal cord injury
30th August 2024
This article is from the Irish Medical Times website:
Electroconductive 3D-printed scaffold aims to encourage nerve cell repair
Irish-based researchers have developed a new implant that has the potential to use electronic signals to aid spinal cord injury.
The device works by conveying electrical signals to encourage nerve cell repair. It has been developed by researcher in RCSI’s University of Medicine and Health Sciences.
More than 2,300 people in Ireland are living with a spinal cord injury, and one person suffers this injury every week here.
After injury, the long axonal projections of nerve cells are cut and ‘die-back’ from the injury site. At the same time a lesion forms at the wound site that prevents the regrowth necessary to restore function.
“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,” said Prof Fergal O’Brien, head of RCSI’s Tissue Engineering Research Group (TERG).
“Our research here represents a promising new approach which may have potential for the treatment of spinal cord injuries.”
To address the problem, TERG and the SFI Advanced Materials and Bioengineering Research (AMBER) Centre at Trinity College Dublin developed an implantable, electroconductive 3D-printed scaffold that can be placed directly into the injury site, bridging the gap.
“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. No such platform exists to date,” Prof O’Brien added.
When electrical stimulation is applied to the implant, it can convey that electrical signal to boost the regrowth of the injured axons. At the same time, the scaffolding and channels of the implant are designed to act as a bridge and direct the axons to grow back in the correct formation.
“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. In the body, this kind of growth would be a key step towards repair and recovery after an injury,” said Liam Leahy, first author of the study and a PhD candidate at RCSI.
The RCSI and AMBER researchers teamed up with the Irish Rugby Football Union Charitable Trust (IRFU-CT) on the project and brought together a spinal cord injury advisory group to oversee and guide the research. That group included clinicians, individuals living with spinal cord injury, and Public and Patient Involvement (PPI) researchers.
“This advisory group provided valuable insight into the realities of spinal cord injuries and potential treatment strategies,” said Leahy. “Through regular meetings as well as laboratory visits, the advisory group helped guide the work from its inception to the current publication and led to two separate publications on the role of Public and Patient Involvement in preclinical research.”
The research findings were recently presented at the TERMIS World Congress in Seattle, while the resulting paper was published this week in the journal ‘Materials Today’.
