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Stem cell-derived nerves have been prompted to migrate through the spinal cord in mice, an important step to their use for treating spinal cord damage in humans.

In experiments with rodents, researchers at The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland overcame a big hurdle to restoring function in severely damaged central nervous systems: Getting new motor neurons to migrate through the spinal cord.

"We think that getting new motor neurons to travel properly through the cord is the major hurdle to try to restore muscle control," says John Hopkins researcher Douglas Kerr. "It's significant that axons from these motor neurons make it outside of the cord."

http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2004-04-29-1