I truly, truly hope this works as described, even partially, on humans. It is so frustrating to see someone who would be able to walk if only the signal could get to their lower extremities.

My grandfather is a paraplegic, and man how much I hope this isn't just faery dust.

Based on this stimulating Axon growth, it sounds like it might help to repair the damage caused by MS. That would be amazing news. Not a cure per se, but a way to actually treat symptoms rather than just surpressing. Worryingly, they mention a few neurodegenerative diseases but not MS.

Do I want to know how they get mice with severe spinal cord injuries to test on? I'm guessing it's exactly what I think it is, but I'm wondering if there's another way that it happens.

> The therapy also induces myelin to rebuild around axons and reduces glial scarring, which acts as a physical barrier that prevents the spinal cord from healing

This gives the impression that this would need to be administered before any scaring takes place. It is probably not a remedy for people with old injuries.

I've always wondered... and so far have been unable to Google this: Does the non-nucleus part of a severed nerve cell die? If so, that would mean we only have a small window to "rejoin" severed CNS nerve cells, right? Nerve cells can be very long, I think up to a meter. I'd assume this includes spinal nerve cells of the CNS, which don't regrow. If the cells are severed, like in a spinal injury, that means there's a half-cell fragment with a nucleus, and the other half is the axon that's been cut away without a nucleus. Wouldn't the fragment without a nucleus shrivel up and die? That would be my intuition because I'd assume the nucleus is necessary to keep a cell alive.

I find myself wondering whether a useful testing step between mice and people might be the community of small dogs with IVDD. French bulldogs, dachshunds, and corgis seem particularly susceptible and many of them wind up with rear paralysis. https://www.thedogsdown.com/how-can-ivdd-cause-paralysis/

The last section about generalizing the treatment is a bit underwhelming. Have they seen any evidence it can be used outside this sort of repair? What about for neuropathies, as from diabetes or surgeries? Stroke? Other dysfunctions (e.g. erectile/genital) having nervous system issues as a contributing factor?

Any treatment "might" have more general applicability--but surely there is some specific direction/class of these conditions that are indicated to be more appropriate to apply the treatment to than others. I wish they'd gone in more depth here.

IN MICE.

Seriously, mice are really really good at healing these injuries. You can find dozens of 'heals spinal cord injuries IN MICE' articles.

These kind of studies and experiments always sound so amazing, but how long would something like this take to be applicable for at least human trials ?

I understand there are so many precautions to take etc, but is there any kind of 'complete consent' one could sign to jump start stuff like that ?

Nice, I've added a link to my calendar to check up on this work a year from now.

As described, it seems as though it would work just as well for traumatic brain injury as well. Either way it would be a huge boost in the quality of life for a lot of people.

I wonder if this would work with something like Guillaine-Barre syndrome (to wit, an autoimmune disease where the body attacks its own nerves, causing demyelination)

Fingers crossed.

I suspect Christopher Reeve had a hand in this somehow. Creating awareness and motivation to work on this.

Again mice models...

Recently every thread on HN about life and death has been devolving into a debate with people who insist that these things need to be addressed in the comments and those that simply don't care. It's honestly exhausting.

It's sort of like making food and having someone at the table try to discuss the morality of the meat you're using.... Except it's every. single. time.

Lab mice are killed off everyday after experiments end even if there's nothing wrong with them. Excuse me if I don't lose any sleep over this experiment.

Over the last 25 years or so, there have been at least a dozen announcements of the latest miracle cure that works to repair spinal cord injury in mice. To date, none of them have translated to human efficacy. It's almost a meme at this point - like net-positive fusion being only ten years away. There appears to be a fundamental difference between mice and human nervous system injury repair modes that leads to early confidence. The spinal cords in mice essentially repair themselves if you so much as ask nicely.

The real litmus test for claims of effective spinal cord repair treatments is primate testing. If you see mice and not chimps, the treatment is probably a dead end.

Not to say this research doesn't have value - I fully support continued and rigorous research in this area - but hyperbolic claims like: "it works in mice, so it should also work in humans" aren't helping the cause.

"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.”

This is not a cheap process in terms of money and manpower. I think they probably have reason for confidence.

IIRC, the motor CNS in mammals is pretty similar across the board.

Yes, as a logical first step.

Now we at least have hope this might work for humans.

> Again mice models...

Do you have a viable alternative for early stage research?

I'm not an expert, but I guess this part is similar enough in mice and human to be optimistic. But IIUC the treatment only makes the regrow of the cut axons faster, it does not reconnect one part with the other part. So the time you should wait until the axon grows to the initial length in humans will be much longer than in mice.

What does “Again” refer to? Was something similar already published? Or you meant “Yet another mice models?

...as if some sort of future rodent time travelers went back in earth's pre-history and tasked countless human-filled labs with unlocking the secrets of rodent medical science so they could, in their own time, mine the wisdom of the ancients and ensure their immortality.

Those mice were in car accidents.

> but if you think we should care about other people - it follows that we should also care about other creatures that can feel and think

It doesn't automatically follow. I can entirely correctly, subjectively decide which living things I want to care about and which I do not. I can separate living things by a hierarchy of importance. Which is exactly what we do all the time with other people and our relationships to them (example: hey HN, let me know how much you love Donald Trump and where he ranks on your hierarchy of importance).

I don't care about mice. I care about puppies (insert reasons here). That is not an irrational position. It's entirely subjective either direction. Any attempt to apply logic or science to the premise is inherently absurd. What we each value and why is subjective, it's personal; it inherently can't be objective. Rat and mice fans might likely pick those over puppies or kittens for example, due to their personal experiences and their hierarchy of values.

No, I wouldn't kill or injure the mice myself for a living. I think it's grotesque.

I wouldn't perform abortions for a living, it's sometimes a very grotesque process. I'm entirely pro-choice.

I wouldn't butcher animals for a living, it's often quite a disgusting process as far as I'm concerned. I have no problem with other people doing so. And I have no problem with eating a steak. That's not contradictory or hypocritical.

I also would never want to be a nurse. I fully understand what nurses do. The human body can be quite disgusting at times. I'm glad nurses exist.

Such things are not contradictory. You can find an action and outcome acceptable, while not enjoying (or glorifying) all aspects of the process in question.

Once you cross the line of: all living things matter without exception and should never be killed, on to: some living things do not matter as much as others (eg plants for consumption) - then you're down to subjectivism as your argument across the board.

The animal rights argument is entirely subjective (what should the protections be, should there be any protections, how many should there be, who decides, for which living things, and on and on). What that means is, the opposite position has as much validity, it's also subjective. What it comes down to is majority politics ultimately: how many people can you get to agree with you, such that you can pass legislation in your preferred direction.