Spinal Cord Injury and Repair: From Mechanisms to Translation

This Gordon Research Conference (GRC) series, entitled “Central Nervous System Injury and Repair”, together with its accompanying Gordon Research Seminar (GRS), provides a forum for the exchange of the most exciting and cutting-edge scientific data and novel ideas in the rapidly advancing fields of injury, regeneration, and repair of the central nervous system, with particular emphasis on spinal cord injury. Spinal cord injury is a major medical challenge leaving millions of people worldwide paralyzed. Despite many years of effort, effective therapies are still lacking due to the complexity of this disease. In addition to the damage of axons, spinal cord injury leads to profound changes of the cellular and molecular environment, involving neurons, glia, immune systems, and others. These barriers collectively present a great challenge in restoring the original circuitry. An emerging consensus is that a better understanding of underlying mechanisms, together with combinatorial approaches to stimulate neural repair, will be necessary to repair axonal injury and induce functional recovery. This conference will feature an exciting program with speakers presenting cutting edge and innovative science including topics that span from cellular and molecular mechanisms from multiple animal models to advance our understanding of the injury response, circuit remodeling and the repair processes, to sessions on organoids, cell therapies and emerging neurotechnologies that will propel new knowledge and approaches towards clinical translation, whose challenges and opportunities will be discussed. Preceding this meeting, the Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) will provide an excellent opportunity for graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and early career scientists to share their research progress. We welcome attendance from basic and physician scientists, from industry, and any stakeholder, and we encourage a breath of diversity of meeting participants across gender, cultural and ethnic backgrounds, geographical locations, and age groups that will facilitate a broad and enriched communication of the scientific content.