Nanoengineered biomaterials for spinal cord regeneration

[Excerpt] Introduction Spinal cord injuries (SCIs) affect millions of people worldwide, and unfortunately there is no cure. Today most clinical strategies used for SCI treatment are based mainly on the delivery of drugs aimed at controlling the immune response, excitotoxicity, and cell death triggered after an injury so that further damage can be avoided.[...]The authors acknowledge the financial support of Prémios Santa Casa Neurociências—Prize Melo e Castro for Spinal Cord Injury Research; Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology: [Financiado no âmbito do Projecto 3599—Promover a Produção Científica e Desenvolvimento Tecnológico e a Constituição de Redes Temáticas (3599-PPCDT), project: PTDC/DTP-FTO/5109/2014]; Doctoral fellowship (SFRH/BD/103075/2014) to E.D. Gomes; Doctoral fellowship (PDE/BDE/113596/2015) to R.C. Assunção-Silva; Post-Doctoral fellowship (SFRH/BPD/97701/2013) to N.A. Silva; IF Development Grant to A.J. Salgado (IF/ 00111/2013); by national funds through grant TUBITAK/0007/2014. This article was developed under the scope of the project NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000013, supported by the Northern Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under the Portugal 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER). This work was funded by FEDER funds, through the Competitiveness Factors Operational Programme (COMPETE), and by National funds, through the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), under the scope of the project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007038