Repair spinal cord injury in mice successfully

Scientists have spent decades trying to find a method to regenerate nerve connections that are damaged when a spinal cord injury. A group of U.S. researchers has successfully tested a new recipe in mice, although they are cautious about its future application in humans.
The key just to present the pages of the journal Nature Neuroscience is an enzyme known as PTEN, old ally in the fight against diseases such as cancer.
PTEN is a 'switch' that remains off during embryonic development, allowing the proliferation and division of cells that will give rise to the whole organism. However, when growth is complete, the switch is 'light' to fulfill its mission: to inhibit the mTOR pathway and cause the cells cease to regenerate.
Zhiger I, a neurologist at Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard University (both in the U.S.), he asked her again off PTEN in rats with spinal cord injury, could be achieved by new cell regeneration sufficient to restore the broken connections. And his experiments with laboratory rodents showed him that the answer was affirmative, and the animals re-establishing some lost motor functions due to a spinal cord injury (with levels that had never been seen before ").
Although his therapy could provide a pathway for the treatment of paralysis, He is cautious about the potential for regeneration of nerve connections in patients with flesh and blood, because they still have to investigate the method of achieving off PTEN without undesirable side effects. Although it concluded that their research shows that "reactivating the mTOR pathway allows adult neurons to recover some of the growth capacity of neurons themselves younger. This 'rejuvenation' could become a successful strategy for various types of injuries and trauma affecting the central nervous system. "