Jennifer Matthews: Cholesterol lowering drugs called statins have been studied to help everything, multiple sclerosis to Alzheimer's. And soon they could help people with devastating spinal cord injuries.
Inderjit Singh: There is no drug for it and people are paralyzed for the rest of their life.
Jennifer Matthews: After a spinal cord injury, inflammation cuts off blood flow to the spine, making the injury that much worse. When researchers gave newly paralyzed rats statins, they not only improved, they actually started walking again.
Dr. Bernard Maria: By using statins to shut off some of those active processes that happen in inflammation, that have nothing to do with the cholesterol lowering ability of the drug, you protect the cells from dying.
Jennifer Matthews: Another group of researchers is on the verge of a breakthrough that will make healing cuts, diabetic wounds and even war injuries a whole lot easier.
Dr. Gautham Ghatnekar: The idea of this technology is to modulate the scarring response so that we shift the balance from scarring towards regeneration.
Jennifer Matthews: Dr. Ghatnekar created a substance based on a naturally-occurring protein in the body. In a recent animal study, it reduced scarring by 50% and healed wounds twice as fast.
Dr. Gautham Ghatnekar: It was great, it was so dramatic. I mean it was almost unbelievable.
Jennifer Matthews: A gel, like this inactive one, will be applied directly to wounds. It can also be injected internally, which would mean less scarring and faster healing for brain, heart, even spinal cord injuries.
Dr. Gautham Ghatnekar: The next step is to proceed to clinical trials in humans.
Jennifer Matthews: And they are well on their way to becoming medicine's next big thing.
This is Jennifer Matthews reporting.
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