Today I spoke with the team's contact mentioned in Spinal Cord Regeneration in South Carolina, and the primary researcher of interest is Xuejen Wen. In addition to receiving funding from the Michael J. Fox Foundation for two consecutive years, Wen recently received a $1.6 million grant titled Tissue Engineering in Spinal Cord Regeneration.
The grant will fund Wen's work with tissue engineering. He hopes to create a scaffold seeded with molecules to help axons grow, prevent scar formation, and others that will (hopefully) guide them to their proper targets.
The approach is solid and is anticipated to work with multiple central nervous system disorders, but the details/components of the treatment matter.
I'll find out more when Wen gets back in town. He works less than 30 minutes from me, so it'll be cool to visit his lab and watch the magic happen.
