Fast-forward two decades: Reier, now a neuroscience professor at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Gainesville, is helping oversee a pioneering clinical trial in which eight SCI patients have received transplants of spinal cord tissue from human fetuses. Papers about the trial have just been published.1,2 In another trial, five SCI patients have received cord tissue from pig fetuses. In animal studies, many labs are treating SCI models with various cell types, ranging from workaday fibroblasts to sexy stem cells. Researchers regularly report that crippled animals regain some degree of function. Alan Tessler, a neurobiology and anatomy professor at Philadelphia's MCP Hahnemann Univer-sity, says he senses "tremendous optimism" in the field.
What has happened in 20 years? At least two landmark studies helped dispel researchers' pessimism. In 1980, researchers learned that mammalian central nervous system neurons, long considered inert, could grow if placed beside axon bundles grafted from ...
