In September 2019 the Perry Cross Spinal Research Foundation funded an additional $86,666 to Griffith University’s Spinal Injury Project.
The funds supported the development of a new generation of nerve bridges to repair the injured spinal cord. Thanks to previous PCSRF and MAIC funding, the Spinal Injury Project team recently developed a new technology to produce nerve bridges which are made entirely from cells. These nerve bridges help promote repair of the injury site and allow nerve cells to grow across the injury site. The team showed that the nerve bridges improve survival of the transplanted cells and lead to good regeneration of the nerve cells in animal models of spinal cord injury.
While the early results were encouraging, what was needed was to improve the design of the nerve bridges so they suit a wider range of injury sites and to continue testing the nerve bridges to determine if they improve functional outcomes in animal models.
The project was led by Professor James St John and Associate Professor Jenny Ekberg and formed part of the larger Spinal Injury Project that is optimising the use of cells taken from the nose – known as olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs).
This PCSRF funding supported two Research Fellows, Mr Mo Chen and Dr Tanja Eindorf. Mo is a bioengineer who is focused on creating the nerve bridges and Tanja is a veterinary surgeon who contributed to the surgical team. During this project the team tested various formats for generating the nerve bridges in animal models with the results showing that good recovery could be achieved with some of the nerve bridge formats.
Dr Mo Chen continues to work with the Spinal Injury project team, but Tanja has since left the Spinal Injury Project.
Publications
Chen M, Shah MP, Shelper TB, Nazareth L, Barker M, Tello Velasquez J, Ekberg JAK, Vial ML, St John J. 2019. Naked liquid marbles: a robust three-dimensional low-volume cell culturing system. ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. 11(10):9814-9823. doi: 10.1021/acsami.8b22036.
Beckingham LJ, Todorovic M, Tello Velasquez J, Vial ML, Chen M, Ekberg J, St John JA. 2019. Three-dimensional cell culture can be regulated by vibration: low-frequency vibration increases the size of olfactory ensheathing cell spheroids. Journal of Biological Engineering, 13:41. doi: 10.1186/s13036-019-0176-1.
Chen M, Vial ML, Gee L, Davis RA, St John JA*, Ekberg JAK*. 2020. The plant natural product 2-methoxy-1,4-naphthoquinone stimulates therapeutic neural repair properties of olfactory ensheathing cells. Scientific Reports, 10(1):951. doi 17. Surrao DC, Arasu Y, Ekberg JAK, St John JA.
Blended, crosslinked alginate-methylcellulose hydrogels for encapsulation and delivery of olfactory ensheathing cells. Materialia, 100564, doi.org/10.1016/j.mtla.2020.100654.: 10.1038/s41598-020-57793-2.
