NEW HAVEN >> Researchers at ReNetX Bio are hoping a new name, the potential for a new influx of cash on the horizon and a new chief executive officer are the winning combination needed to bring its lead drug candidate to market. ReNetX Bio is looking to guide its drug candidate, Nogo Trap, through its first round of clinical trials. Company officials say Nogo Trap is designed to help patients with chronic spinal cord injury. The science behind Nogo Trap comes out of work done by Stephen Strittmatter, director of Yale Universitys Department of Cellular Neuroscience, Neurodegeneration and Repair. And Strittmatter is relaunching his former company, Axerion Therapeutics, as ReNetX Bio. The new name is short for Restoration of Neural Network. And with the new name comes a new chief executive officer, Erika Smith. Advertisement Smith comes to ReNetX Bio from Yales Blavatnik Fund for Innovation, where she served as director. She is very passionate about this, not just the company, but the great science and the team that is behind it, said Susan Froshauer, president and chief executive officer of CURE, a New Haven-based group that represents companies in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. ReNetX appointed Smith as part … Continue reading →

NEW HAVEN A Yale neurology and neuroscience professor who hopes to regrow neurons in patients with spinal cord injuries has secured enough funding for a human clinical trial. Stephen Strittmatters New Haven-based company, ReNetX, also has a new CEO, Erika Smith, who joined the biomedical venture in June after leaving her post as director of Yale Universitys $10-million Blavatnik Fund for Innovation. The company has raised about $20 million from the National Institutes of Health and other sources to carry out the first stages of a trial involving people with tetraplegia, paralysis of all four limbs and the torso. Strittmatter said his approach works like a double negative. He identified a receptor that inhibits the growth of nerve fibers and then created a decoy to block it. That leaves the neurons free to grow or regrow, in this case naturally, as they do in early development. We have this huge hospital and medical complex, Strittmatter said last week at his office in the Boyer Center for Molecular Medicine, 2 miles from the Yale New Haven Hospital Spine Center. We dont have a single drug that promotes neuroconnection. So if we get it to a trial and if the trials successful, … Continue reading →

Athletic trainers in St. Louis are continuing to train for emergent situations as a number of high school football players across the country continue to die each year. Josh Helmuth, KSDK 11:07 PM. CDT July 30, 2017 American Football Practice Hit Pads (Photo: 33ft, David Lee) ST. LOUIS - Athletic trainers in St. Louis are continuing to train for emergent situations as a number of high school football players across the country continue to die each year. According to the National Center For Catastrophic Sport Injury Research, there have been 35 direct deaths from football since 2010; there have been at least 61 if you count in-direct deaths from causes such as heat stroke. In fact, 2017 has already claimed at least two high school football players: Kamari McGowan of Fairburn, Georgia, and Everson Guild of Grand Ledge, Michigan. And the deaths are almost always teenagers. Why? Unlike college or pro teams, just 37 percent of public high schools across the country have full-time athletic trainers(ATs), according to the National Athletic Trainers Association. Jason Muchow is the director of sports medicine at Mercy Hospital. He believes every high school should have a full-time ATs on staff. I think its direly … Continue reading →

Credit: CC0 Public Domain A new study in rats shows that changes in the brain after spinal cord injury are necessary to restore at least some function to lower limbs. The work was published recently in the journal eLife. "After injury, the spinal cord cannot go back to its original state before the injury. If an animal receives rehabilitation therapy, we now know that the spinal cord will go to a new state that supports functional recovery. Under these conditions, the brain must also change and re-learn to communicate with the new state of the spinal cord," said Karen Moxon, professor of biomedical engineering at UC Davis and senior author on the paper. Moxon and colleagues used a combination of physical therapy (cycling and semi-load bearing treadmill training) and treatment with the drug serotonin, which stimulates nerve cells, in rats with a severed spinal cord that could not voluntarily move their hind legs. The rats partially recovered their ability to move their hind limbs while on the treadmill and were even able to take consecutive, independent steps, the researchers found. This occurred without healing of the break in the spinal cord. Instead, the nerve cells above the break appear to … Continue reading →