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Halfway across town on the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, a doctor cannot help but smile when he talks about his work.
"I feel confident in saying that I'd be really disappointed if we didn't have something within the next five years that is of major benefit to people with spinal cord injuries," said Dr. Stephen Davies, associate professor in the department of neurosurgery at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
Davies speaks in a language difficult for the uninitiated to understand. He talks of astrocytes, and axons and neurons. (Click here to learn more about Davies' research.)
But the moment you start to get that puzzled look on your face he grins, takes a deep breath and talks to you about the possibility of doing something previously thought to be impossible.
He wants to help heal the one part of the body that tends to resist healing. He wants to encourage the nerves in an injured spinal cord to "bridge the gap."
"For the last century we've been trying to understand why nerve fibers don't regenerate after a severe injury in the spinal cord or brain," he said.
Most of the blame lands squarely at the feet of scar tissue.
"Scar seems to be a major barrier," he said. "Unfortunately, the scar is made up, in the spinal cord, of whatever molecules are available. Unfortunately, those molecules now form a barrier in the scar to nerve fiber growth."
It is the body's stop-gap measure to prevent infection, but it has all but ensured that nerve fibers on one side of the body will never be able to link up with nerve fibers on the other side of the body.
Years ago, Davies came up with a way to suppress scar formation by using a molecule that is already produced naturally in the body. By using decorin, he has been able to suppress scar formation by up to 90 percent in rats.
More recently, he started trying to perfect a technique that would actually encourage nerve regeneration across scar tissue. This is where the word "astrocyte" comes into play.
It is complicated, but by placing astrocytes made by using a specific kind of stem cell into the injury site, he can fuel growth across the once impenetrable.
"We've seen almost 40 percent efficiency on nerve fiber growth over a spinal cord injury in rats. The previous record was 5 percent," he said. "What we see is 39 percent of nerve fibers before an injury getting right past that injury."
"We're getting amazing results in the lab with rats," he said. "Now we have to translate those results to humans."
In a world where five-year promises seem to be made every year, Davies feels pretty confident in saying we may be five years away from "something big."
It is why he is an advocate for those with spinal cord injuries to try to stay in the best shape possible.
"Keep those connections in good shape," he said, "so we can use them when we make new connections in the spinal cord."
He feels like clinical trials on humans may be "two or three years away."
It is partially why three times a week, Luke Vogel can be found working out at SCI Recovery. (Click here for more on the SCI Recovery Project.)
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