‘Dancing molecules’ successfully repair severe spinal cord injuries

These kind of studies and experiments always sound so amazing, but how long would something like this take to be applicable for at least human trials ?

I understand there are so many precautions to take etc, but is there any kind of 'complete consent' one could sign to jump start stuff like that ?

Yeah, but this is incredible if it works at the human level.

My friend was in a car accident and a subwoofer that wasn't tied down ended up striking in him the back paralyzing him from the mid-back down. Years and years of heartache for both my friend, and the other friend who installed the subwoofer without tying it down.

There was a lot of things wrong that allowed this to happen, but knowing future people with injuries like my friend whom this therapy could save or alleviate makes me incredibly excited.

This, however, seems to suggest that the therapy actually reduces pre-existing scar tissue:

> the breakthrough therapy dramatically improved severely injured spinal cords in five key ways: (1) The severed extensions of neurons, called axons, regenerated; (2) scar tissue, which can create a physical barrier to regeneration and repair, significantly diminished;

Over the last 25 years or so, there have been at least a dozen announcements of the latest miracle cure that works to repair spinal cord injury in mice. To date, none of them have translated to human efficacy. It's almost a meme at this point - like net-positive fusion being only ten years away. There appears to be a fundamental difference between mice and human nervous system injury repair modes that leads to early confidence. The spinal cords in mice essentially repair themselves if you so much as ask nicely.

The real litmus test for claims of effective spinal cord repair treatments is primate testing. If you see mice and not chimps, the treatment is probably a dead end.

Not to say this research doesn't have value - I fully support continued and rigorous research in this area - but hyperbolic claims like: "it works in mice, so it should also work in humans" aren't helping the cause.

Maybe a dumb question but....

If scar tissue forms after an injury and blocks the area (on both sides of the nerve, I assume), like this ---x x--- . Could you then cut the scarred area away, creating "new" injury that this treatment could cure?

----x x----

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