Some hopeful research for treating spinal cord injury was published in the Journal of Neuroscience in which peptide amphiphile (PA) molecules self-assemble in vivo into supramolecular nanofibers that inhibit the formation of scar tissue at the injury and help the spinal cord fibers to regenerate.
John Kessler, M.D., and Professor of Stem Cell Biology at Northwestern and his team of researchers are quite encouraged by their successful research with mice and believe that it has the potential for treating human spinal cord injuries.
This news was picked up by a number of the nanotechnology blogs, but the blog over at the Center for Nanotechnology in Society (CNS) at the University of California Santa Barbara had an interesting take on it.
The CNS concerns itself with nanotechnology and its impact on society, and society’s impact on nanotechnology. So, they are experts on this sort of thing. They noted how one of the articles covering the story from Stem Cell Research News opted to use the term “building block” as opposed to “self assembly” in describing the gel under discussion.
As I said, they are experts on this kind of thing, so I tend to believe them when they say this is significant. What is alarming is that the general public may have become so skeptical--or just plain fearful of everything--that they can be presented research that may help alleviate some of the most detrimental effects of spinal cord injury and they would turn away because of the term “self assembly”.
One has to really stretch one’s imagination to figure out how “self assembly” can be construed into such a monstrous concept that even it helps spinal cord injury victims walk again it should be avoided.
