The CatWalk Trust and Health Research Council Announcement.

The CatWalk Trust and the Health Research Council are pleased to announce that funding has been offered to the following recipient through the HRC and CatWalk Trust partnership.

This call for applications was about supporting biomedical and clinical research in spinal cord injury treatment and cure. 2019 HRC and CatWalk Trust partnership recipient: Associate Professor Darren Svirskis, The University of Auckland A bioelectronic implant to reconnect damaged nerves following spinal cord injury 36 months, $476,190 Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a devastating, and currently incurable, disease and has a profound impact on an individual’s quality of life. An estimated 27 million people suffer from SCI globally, due either to trauma or as a result of disease, with a lifetime cost per person as high as $10 million. This project will investigate an innovative new treatment combining both beneficial electrical fields and nerve growth factors to regenerate damaged nerves following SCI. We will first determine the best combination of treatment parameters in vitro before delivering them through our bioelectronic implant to an animal model. In our animal model of SCI we seek to demonstrate that damaged nerves can be regenerated and functional recovery achieved. This transformative technology has the potential to boost the body’s innate ability to heal itself, and would deliver both health and economic benefits to New Zealand.