New Hope for People With Spinal Cord Injuries

(NAPSI)—If you or someone you care about is ever among the approximately 17,700 Americans who each year, according to The Journal of American Medical Association, suffer a new spinal cord injury or the hundreds of thousands that continue to live with a spinal cord injury, you may be relieved to learn about recent research. 

The Issue

A spinal cord injury is damage to the spinal cord that results in a total or partial loss of function, such as mobility, feeling or autonomic function, such as bladder control.

In most cases, the damage results from physical trauma, such as falls, car accidents or sports injuries, but can also result from infections or other diseases.

Unfortunately, at this time there’s no way to reverse spinal cord damage incurred in a spinal cord injury.

Some Answers

The good news is, researchers are continually working on new treatments, including prostheses and medications, that may promote nerve cell regeneration or improve the function of the nerves that remain after the injury.

One such promising treatment is NervGen’s NVG-291 which was discovered in the labs of Dr. Jerry Silver at Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Silver is a renowned spinal cord injury and regenerative medicine researcher, a Professor of Neurosciences at Case Western Reserve University’s School of Medicine and was recently awarded a grant by the State of Ohio to continue his work on a treatment for spinal cord injury, including looking at the effect of NVG-291 in a chronic setting. Preclinical tests by NervGen and by independent labs suggest NVG-291 promotes the repair of the nervous system leading to the return of mobility and bladder function. 

Jay Shepard, Chairman of the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, commented, “As part of my leadership of the Reeve Foundation’s pursuit of treatments that will move us closer toward functional recovery and cures for people living with paralysis, we follow closely exciting research at all stages of development. We look forward to further investigation of NVG-291 and have every hope for its success. Technology to promote nerve repair in both an acute and chronic setting would be a game-changing therapeutic.”   

There is promise for NervGen’s compound, NVG-291, to be a treatment for not only those that were just injured, but the hundreds of thousands of people that continue to live with the injuries for the rest of their lives. What’s more is that, in these animal models, the improvement that was seen was a lasting one. 

Learn More

For further information, visit www.nervgen.com.

On the Net:North American Precis Syndicate, Inc.(NAPSI)