Treating Chronic Pain after Spinal Cord Injury
Abstract
Active military personnel and Veterans represent a large population of individuals suffering from chronic pain due to multiple types of traumatic injuries, including spinal cord injury. In fact, chronic pain affects up to 80% of patients who have sustained a spinal cord injury. Unfortunately, existing treatments for chronic pain are usually ineffective, greatly worsening what is already the substantial burden of injury. Our research program aims to identify the basic causes of chronic pain and to develop new treatments for chronic pain based on the powerful biology of neural stem cells. We recently discovered that neural stem cells, grafted into the injured spinal cords of rats and monkeys, exhibit a remarkable ability to form large numbers of new connections over very long distances in the host spinal cord. Even after complete severing of the spinal cord, neural stem cells form new relays across the injury that support partial recovery of function in rat models. This work is now in translational development, which could lead to human clinical trials in the near future. A consideration of great importance in this work is whether transplants of neural stem cells after spinal cord injury will improve, stabilize, or worsen traumatically induced chronic pain. This information is essential for the initiation of human clinical trials and is consistent with our overarching research vision to understand the causes and develop effective treatments for chronic pain. This project will foster work in a new direction in spinal cord injury research while addressing a neglected issue that extracts an enormous human toll from our injured Soldiers and Veterans: chronic pain. Successful completion of this research program will add to our basic knowledge of cellular and molecular causes of pain and could lead to the clinical implementation of an innovative new therapy for chronic pain based on the powerful biology of stem cells.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Apr 04, 2016
- Source ID
- W81XWH1510498
Entities
People
- Wendy Campana
Organizations
- United States Army
- University of California, San Diego