Dorsal Root Injury—A Model for Exploring Pathophysiology and Therapeutic Strategies in Spinal Cord Injury

This review discusses dorsal root injury models and how they can help future exploration of mechanisms and potential therapies for spinal cord injury repair. The dorsal root-spinal cord unit provides a favorable platform for assessing the outcome of these interventions, individually as well as in various combinations Here, we discuss injury (axotomy) of dorsal roots as an attractive experimental model to address key aspects of spinal cord injury repair in vivo.

• 1
  Restoration of functions that are lost following dorsal root injury requires that injured dorsal root axons are able to extend axons through a non-permissive environment, which is rapidly building up at the DREZ.
• 2
  Dorsal root avulsion provides a clinically relevant condition for exploring mechanisms underlying anterograde transneuronal degeneration in particular and means to counteract this process.
• 3
  Dorsal root injury offers attractive experimental models to determine key mechanisms in these processes in vivo, their exploitation for the development of novel therapeutic strategies, and their translation to a clinical setting for dorsal root injuries.