Recent progress and challenges in the treatment of spinal cord injury

Spinal cord injury (SCI) disrupts connections between the brain and spinal cord, leading to loss of motor, sensory, and autonomic functions and various complications. Current treatments have limited benefits, and effective strategies to repair SCI are lacking. Axon regeneration and functional recovery are significant challenges in neuroscience. The pathophysiology of SCI involves an initial injury followed by secondary damage, complicating treatment. Combinatory strategies targeting multiple aspects of SCI pathology have achieved greater beneficial effects than individual therapy alone. This review characterizes mechanisms of axon regeneration in adult neurons and summarizes advances in facilitating functional recovery post-SCI in acute and chronic stages. It also analyzes the current status, problems, and challenges towards clinical translation, providing insights into narrowing the gap between preclinical studies and clinical practice.

• 1
  Failure of regeneration after SCI is attributed to the poor intrinsic regrowth capacity of adult neurons and the non-permissive local environment.
• 2
  Multiple therapeutic strategies, including neuroprotection, targeting intrinsic regenerative capacity, ameliorating the local microenvironment, cell-based therapies, and neuromodulation-based interventions, have emerged to improve SCI outcomes.
• 3
  Combinatorial strategies that act on multiple pathological processes of SCI have been shown to be more effective than individual treatments alone.