Question: how are you thinking of fixing spines

Aida Rodrigo answered on 12 Feb 2023:

Ahh – this is THE question I think most about! As you may know, in an injured spinal cord the circuits that connect the brain and the body are disconnected. These circuits are made of neurons, and many of them die after injury. Here’s my approach: I saw that axolotls can regenerate the spinal cord from stem cells and our spinal cord also contains similar stem cells that can divide and make new cells, including neurons! But they do not do it very efficiently. I want to learn from axolotls how to help/use these cells to make new neurons to reconnect the circuits in an injured spinal cord. This will probably be only part of the equation because fixing an injured spinal cord is a huge challenge, but I’m here for it! 🙂