A jab to ‘dance’ spines back to life
This is great news. Researchers at Northwestern University successfully reversed paralysis in mice by injecting a self-assembling gel into their spines. The gel contained “dancing molecules” that repaired severed nerves and scar tissue while helping new myelin sheaths and blood vessels to grow. The mice could walk again in less than a month, with no side effects.
“Dancing molecules” sounds silly, but it’s kind of right. The gel contains monomer protein units that spontaneously form into long chains or “fibrils”. The researchers designed the monomers to include a mutant peptide that promoted “intense supramolecular motion within the fibrils“, and the jiggling of the fibrils somehow improves recovery.
“We are going straight to the FDA to start the process of getting this new therapy approved for use in human patients, who currently have very few treatment options,” said Northwestern’s Samuel I. Stupp, who led the study.
The FDA doesn’t have a good record on promoting lifesaving innovation. Its slow response to Covid killed a lot of Americans and woke others up to the “invisible graveyard” filled with the victims of regulatory delay. Let’s hope they pay attention to this one.