Nerve fibers in the adult central nervous system (i.e. spinal cord and brain) fail to regenerate after injury, and to date there are no therapies for enhancing their repair. Spinal cord injuries affect people’s lives in a dramatic and long-term fashion, and the social and economic burden of life-long care is enormous.

For a long time there was a dogma that damaged fiber tracts of the central nervous system could not regenerate. However, there is accumulating evidence that specific inhibitory molecules found in myelin (protective layer around nerve fibers) are responsible for the absence of nerve fiber regeneration and the poor functional recovery after injury. This concept, as well as the discovery of the most potent currently known of such growth inhibitors, the membrane protein Nogo-A, were discovered in Zurich by Professor Martin Schwab and his group. His team also demonstrated that antibodies blocking the function of Nogo-A led to long-distance regeneration of injured nerve fibers in the spinal cord of monkeys and rats, and greatly improved their functional recovery.