EXCELLENT IDEA OF THE DAY: FIXING HURT NERVES
Nerve disease and injuries are tough to treat, largely because there’s no way to regenerate many damaged nerve cells. Neurologist Joseph Corey is trying to change that.
Corey and a team of scientists from the University of Michigan Medical School, the Veterans Administration Ann Arbor Healthcare System and the University of California, San Francisco used incredibly tiny polymer fibers — only nanometers wide — as a scaffold. They coaxed a certain type of brain cell, called an oligodendrocyte, to form a protective coating, called a myelin sheath, around the fiber. The artificial fiber mimicked the shape and size of the type of nerve cell that transmits signals, called an axon.
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