Spinal Cord Research Center

   Spinal cord injury is a devastating condition that afflicts from 10,000 - 20, 000 Americans annually. These individuals, mostly young men and women 16-30 years old, remain paralyzed for the rest of their lives, require continuous medical treatment and are mostly dependent on others. The cost of this care is high, the loss of productive income is enormous and the physical consequences of paralysis and pain are tragic.

      More than 20 years ago, a group of faculty members at the Medical College of Pennsylvania (now the Drexel University College of Medicine) joined together to study ways of promoting recovery after spinal injury . They have taken advantage of recent advances in stem cell biology, gene therapy, physiology of locomotion and pharmacological interventions to open new avenues for more effective treatment of this previously intractable condition. The spinal cord research group is engaged in an innovative and multidisciplinary program for studying the pathophysiology of spinal cord injury and the use of various therapeutic strategies that include transplantation, drug therapy physical rehabilitation, functional electrical stimulation and robotics. These approaches represent the most sophisticated techniques of contemporary neuroscience and neuroengineering. Our goal and mission are "to bridge the gap between the discovery phase and clinical application by optimizing promising research strategies and developing effective and responsible protocols to treat patients whose function has been limited by spinal cord injury".