Recent Advances in Nanotherapeutic Strategies for Spinal Cord Injury Repair

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a devastating condition with no cure. Nanoscale strategies offer promising new means of treating SCI by crossing the blood–spinal cord barrier to deliver therapeutics. Nanomaterials can modulate inflammatory signals, target inhibitory factors in the lesion, and promote axonal regeneration after SCI, offering synergistic effects with emerging research areas like optogenetics, immunotherapy and CRISPR-mediated genome editing. This review discusses different nanomaterial fabrication methods, recent studies, emerging research areas and clinical translation barriers.

• 1
  Nanocarriers enable localized, slow, and sustained delivery of therapeutics at the site of injury, overcoming limitations of systemic administration.
• 2
  Nanomaterials presenting physical guidance cues for regenerating axons and/or loaded with therapeutic drugs show great potential for revolutionizing SCI treatment.
• 3
  Emerging technologies like optogenetics, immunotherapy, and CRISPR/Cas9 hold great potential for revolutionizing SCI repair, especially in combination with nanosystems.