New Hope for Spinal Cord Injury Recovery

A new era is dawning in spinal cord injury research/treatment.

A University of Minnesota Twin Cities research team has developed a potentially historic spinal cord injury treatment that combines 3D printing, stem cell biology, and lab-grown tissues. Details of the team’s work was published over the summer in Advanced Healthcare Materials.

The research could one day benefit the more than 300,000 U.S. residents who suffer from spinal cord injuries (SCIs) (according to the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center) and cannot completely reverse the resulting damage and paralysis. A major challenge in SCIs is the death of nerve cells and the inability for nerve fibers to regrow across the affected site. The university team’s new research tackles this problem head-on.

The method involves creating a unique 3D-printed framework for lab-grown organs called an organoid scaffold, with microscopic channels. These channels are then populated with regionally specific spinal neural progenitor cells (sNPCs), which are cells derived from human adult stem cells that can divide and differentiate into specific types of mature cells.

“We use the 3D printed channels of the scaffold to direct the growth of the stem cells, which ensures the new nerve fibers grow in the desired way,” said Guebum Han, a former University of Minnesota mechanical engineering postdoctoral researcher and first author on the paper, who currently works at Intel Corporation. “This method creates a relay system that when placed in the spinal cord bypasses the damaged area.” 

In their study, the researchers transplanted these scaffolds into rats with completely severed spinal cords. The cells successfully differentiated into neurons and extended their nerve fibers in both directions—rostral (toward the head) and caudal (toward the tail)—to form new connections with the host’s existing nerve circuits. The new nerve cells integrated seamlessly into the host spinal cord tissue over time, leading to significant functional recovery in the rats.

“Regenerative medicine has brought about a new era in spinal cord injury research,” said Ann Parr, a neurosurgery professor at the University of Minnesota. “Our laboratory is excited to explore the future potential of our ‘mini spinal cords’ for clinical translation.”

While the research is in its beginning stages, it offers new hope for SCI victims. The team hopes to scale up production and continue developing this combination of technologies for future clinical applications.

In addition to Han and Parr, the team included Hyunjun Kim and Michael McAlpine from the University of Minnesota Department of Mechanical Engineering; Nicolas S. Lavoie, Nandadevi Patil, and Olivia G. Korenfeld from the University of Minnesota Department of Neurosurgery; Manuel Esguerra from the University of Minnesota Department of Neuroscience; and Daeha Joung from the Department of Physics at Virginia Commonwealth University.

This work was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the State of Minnesota Spinal Cord Injury and Traumatic Brain Injury Research Grant Program, and the Spinal Cord Society.