The Neilsen Foundation has supported research focused on spinal cord injury since its inception. We have funded a wide range of research over the years, including studies to establish a new understanding of the injuries as well as those that are advancing treatments that will improve lives. For 2024, we are proud to announce that a group of 26 grants have been selected for funding, totaling almost $10 million in the Spinal Cord Injury Research on the Translational Spectrum (SCIRTS) portfolio.
Many topics will be studied, all directed toward improving quality of life for people living with spinal cord injury (SCI). Some projects look at restoring movements, such as walking or hand function, as well as responses to touch or reducing pain. Others focus on improving breathing, balance, or cardiovascular health. Hearing the daily needs of people living with SCI, we are particularly pleased that nearly one-third of the new grants pay close attention to bladder and bowel function. These are issues that directly impact a person’s dignity as well as their health, so the goals of this work range from improving continence, stimulating urination and bowel movements, as well as preventing urinary tract infections.
Research in the SCIRTS portfolio is generally about how cells, organs, and behaviors are affected by SCI or how these body parts or activities respond to therapeutic strategies. Those strategies might be drugs, cellular therapies, electrical stimulation, or rehabilitation. Most importantly, these approaches are being tested in combination, which is often how people experience therapy in stages of their recovery.
Previously, studies were designed to ask questions about only one therapy at a time to understand if it had a reliable benefit, but that is not how patients receive care. It is now recognized that it can be important to test different types of therapy simultaneously. Rehab works together with medicines and the other types of treatment to stimulate nerve activity and growth, so they are being tested together and showing results that are greater than the sum of the parts.
SCI is generally described as the loss of signals from the brain to the body that control movement and other functions, but the effects of this profound injury are really in both directions. Injuries to the spinal cord block messages from the body to the brain, and the brain itself changes in response. Researchers are now looking more closely at mental experiences of people after SCI and the source of these changes, including both pain syndromes and cognitive function.
New SCIRTS grantees are exploring how damage within the spinal cord affects the health and function of cells in the brain that control our experience of discomfort, depression, awareness, and memory. Their focus is on the biological underpinnings of these psychological experiences. This complements the Neilsen Foundation’s Psychosocial Research grants, which conduct studies that ask about people’s experiences after SCI and test behavioral therapies in clinical and community settings.
More than ever, SCIRTS researchers are building upon historic progress to test the most promising approaches. This search for knowledge is the process by which treatments of the future can be designed, moved ahead to clinical trials, and ultimately become part of a standard doctors visit to improve the quality of care and overall health for people after SCI.
Learn more about our SCIRTS application process and funding opportunities here.