Hope for Paralysis: Old Drug Shows Promise in Spinal Cord Regeneration

Daily Health

·

31/10/2025

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Neuroscientists at the University of California San Diego have found that the old drug Thiorphan causes severed spinal cord nerves to grow back. Because the drug already has a safety history, people who now live with paralysis might receive help sooner than usual.

Key Points

Thiorphan, a drug that doctors once used for other illnesses, triggers regrowth in damaged spinal cord nerve cells.
The team hunted for the drug with high powered computers that scan giant molecular libraries.
In dishes of living adult human brain cells, the drug pushed out new nerve branches.
Rats with spinal cord injury walked better after Thiorphan - the gain doubled when the animals also received stem cell grafts.
Because doctors have already given Thiorphan to humans for different problems, safety tests for the new use should take less time.

Why Spinal-Cord Injuries Seldom Heal

After the spinal cord is severed, patients usually stay paralyzed for life. A ripped nerve in a finger can grow back, but a nerve inside the brain or spinal cord almost never does. The body simply lacks the built in repair program for that tissue - scientists have spent years looking for a switch that turns the program on.

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How the Drug Was Found

Researchers at UCSD fed huge gene activity data sets into computers and asked which genes light up when a nerve starts to regrow. They then screened thousands of known drugs for the same gene fingerprint. Once used for digestive problems, matched the pattern and rose to the top of the list.

What Happened in the Lab and in Animals

The team first grew adult human neurons in plastic dishes. When they added Thiorphan, the cells sprouted long new branches. Rats with half severed spinal cords received daily Thiorphan shots. After a few weeks the animals scored 50 % higher on tasks that test paw dexterity. When the drug was paired with an injection of neural stem cells, the improvement rate reached 100 % above the untreated group.

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Looking Ahead

Neuroscientist Erna van Niekerk besides Professor Mark H. Tuszynski say the work shows that computer led drug searches, gene maps and cell transplants can be combined into one treatment plan. Human tests have not started - yet the data point to a time when paralysis need not be permanent.

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