The American Paralysis Association (APA) is committed to expediting the development of
rational therapies for spinal cord injury. APA believes that recent scientific advances in the field and reigning economic realities warrant an expansion of its traditional funding paradigms. In cooperation with the Kent Waldrep National Paralysis Foundation (NPF), the Association is organizing a consortium of laboratories whose mandate is repair of the chronically damaged spinal cord.

The development of therapies for recovery from spinal cord injury is so complex as to be beyond the scope of any individual laboratory. APA believes the solution to this involves pooling the talents, experience, tools, and scientific inquisitiveness of individuals regardless of their diverse geographic locations. The APA Consortium can be viewed as a worldwide institute, a laboratory without walls, that imposes a strategic and cohesive assault on the challenge of repairing the chronically injured spinal cord.

The eight principle investigators of the APA Consortium on Spinal Cord Injury, listed below, represent a unique configuration of experience and expertise. They bring a wealth of concepts and techniques, molecular methods, probes, reagents, existing cell lines, spinal cord models and new computer-based analytical methods to their collaboration. With their diverse neuroscience backgrounds bearing directly on the cellular, molecular and organismal aspects of spinal cord injury, their focused attack should contribute significantly to the understanding of the human condition.

Ira B. Black, M.D.
UMDNJ, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
Piscataway, New Jersey

Richard P. Bunge, M.D.
The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis
Miami, Florida

Dennis W. Choi, M.D., Ph.D.
Washington University Medical School
St. Louis, Missouri

Carl W. Cotman, Ph.D.
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, California

Fred H. Gage, Ph.D.
The Salk Institute
La Jolla, California

Luis F. Parada, Ph.D.
University of Texas Dallas Southwestern
Dallas, Texas

Martin E. Schwab, Ph.D.
Brain Research Institute, University of Zurich
Zurich, Switzerland

Wise Young, Ph.D., M.D.
New York University Medical School
New York, New York

The Association's board of directors has appointed an independent Consortium Advisory Panel (CAP) to interact with the principle investigators in a collegial capacity. CAP has reviewed the Scientific Plan of the Consortium and enthusiastically endorsed it. There is strong consensus that it represents a timely and potentially fruitful collaboration that will make important contributions to the field.

The Consortium has clearly-defined goals:

1.Stimulate research on chronic spinal cord injury and provide leadership in the field through the identification and targeting of intervention points for recovery
2.Establish a team approach to defining the cellular and molecular states in chronic spinal cord injury
3. Maintain and rebuild functional circuitry, building on the fundamental observations.
4. Develop and train young investigators in the field
5. Disseminate Consortium findings in the scientific literature and on their APA Home Page

The multi-year collaboration will address three specific objectives in seeking to develop strategies to improve function in the chronic spinal cord:

1. Define the molecular and cellular properties in the chronic spinal cord injury model
2. Promote recovery of host neuronal functions and stimulate axonal regrowth
*Work on this goal will draw heavily from data and concepts developed in (1)
3. Replace lost neurons and stimulate axonal outgrowth and integration through the grafting of neuronal substitutes.

There is precedent in the scientific community for the idea of organizing a group of individuals to collaborate on specific experiments with a common theme and share information and scientific tools on an ongoing basis. Indeed, similar approaches have worked for other diseases and catalyzed experimental progress. For example, both the Hereditary Disease Foundation and the Muscular Dystrophy Association have had resounding success focusing limited resources and first-rate investigators on a single topic. The American Paralysis Association and the National Paralysis Foundation have every expectation the same will be true of the APA Consortium on Spinal Cord Injury.