{"id":51048,"date":"2025-08-07T03:10:03","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T03:10:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/51048\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T03:10:03","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T03:10:03","slug":"regenerative-spinal-cord-injury-therapy-repairs-tissue-and-reverses-paralysis-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/51048\/","title":{"rendered":"Regenerative spinal cord injury therapy repairs tissue and reverses paralysis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Surgical procedure.  Image by Pfree2014 &#8211; Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/news.northwestern.edu\/stories\/2021\/11\/dancing-molecules-successfully-repair-severe-spinal-cord-injuries\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Dancing molecules<\/a>\u201d, as dubbed by the researchers, is a promising new treatment for acute spinal cord injuries developed at Northwestern University. The novel drug has\u00a0received <a href=\"https:\/\/www.accessdata.fda.gov\/scripts\/opdlisting\/oopd\/detailedIndex.cfm?cfgridkey=1061524\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Orphan Drug Designation\u00a0<\/a>from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).<\/p>\n<p>Developed by regenerative nanomedicine pioneer\u00a0Samuel I. Stupp, the therapy harnesses molecular motion to reverse paralysis and repair tissues after traumatic spinal cord injuries.<\/p>\n<p>Stupp first introduced the platform in 2021 in\u00a0a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/science.abh3602\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">study published in<\/a> the journal Science (\u201cBioactive scaffolds with enhanced supramolecular motion promote recovery from spinal cord injury\u201d). In that study, a one-time injection administered 24 hours after severe injury helped mice regain the ability to walk. This occurred just four weeks after treatment.<\/p>\n<p>The FDA\u2019s Orphan Drug program is designed to encourage and support the development of treatments for rare diseases or conditions. The designation\u2019s benefits include financial incentives such as tax credits for clinical trials, exemption from user fees and up to seven years of market exclusivity after approval.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Amphix Bio, a company spun out from Stupp\u2019s Northwestern laboratory, is designed to help navigate the FDA approval process. The firm is targeting late 2026 for the first trials in spinal cord injury patients and is now completing safety studies required for regulatory approval to begin human trials.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSince we first published our results in 2021, we have validated the ability of these molecules to regenerate functional neural tissue in new animal models, different types of spinal cord injury and in other neurodegenerative diseases,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/news.northwestern.edu\/stories\/2025\/07\/dancing-molecules-receive-fda-orphan-drug-designation\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Stupp says in a research brief<\/a>. \u201cThis gives us confidence that we are on the right track in developing a new solution to treat this debilitating and very challenging condition.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To administer the treatment, researchers inject the liquid therapy into the region where a spinal cord injury occurred. The liquid then gels into a network of nanofibers, which serve as a scaffold to support cell growth. These nanofibers contain bioactive signals that trigger potent regenerative pathways, enabling motor neurons from the brain to regrow past the injury site and connect to the lower spinal cord. This re-establishes connections that were severed by injury.<\/p>\n<p>By controlling the collective motion of the \u201cdancing molecules\u201d within the fibres, scientists discovered that intensifying the molecular motion increased the therapy\u2019s signalling power and led to greater tissue regeneration and functional improvement in the injured animals.<\/p>\n<p>As a sign of the importance of the research, according to the U.S. National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the U.S. has approximately 18,000 new cases of acute spinal cord injury each year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Surgical procedure. Image by Pfree2014 &#8211; Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0 \u201cDancing molecules\u201d, as dubbed by the researchers,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50683,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[49,48,2971,2970,994,66,33880],"class_list":["post-51048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-drugs","tag-medical","tag-research","tag-science","tag-spine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}