LAUSR

An estimated 55M individuals experience spinal cord injuries (SCIs), 230K in the United States. When a nerve is injured, the environment prevents healing of neurons and myelin. This is due to the presence of myelin inhibitors, growth factor not re-expressing, and glial tissue scarring rapidly. In order to bypass this mechanism nerves need to regenerate quickly, and unfortunately, no effective method currently exists to stimulate neurogenesis to the central nervous system. We propose an innovative non-invasive method to stimulate neurogenesis through low-intensity focused or unfocused ultrasound irradiation. We developed an in vitro system integrating unfocused ultrasound (UFUS) with neuron axon dynamics using a 3D microenvironment for neurogenesis. Dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons are used for our studies and microsurgically removed at day 15 and E18 Sprague Dawley cortical neurons from BrainBits, LLC. To determine if stimulation of axon growth occurs, we measure density and distance using phase contras...