A New Year Brings New Connections

As we enter 2022, I am most excited about our work on drugs and genes to drive new connections after stroke. I'm influenced in this work by my mentor Tom Carmichael who paved the way for showing that these pathways are operative in the brain. Our work shows that the axonal degeneration triggered by ischemic stroke injury to axons intrinsically limits the potential for recovery. Working around the mechanisms of axonal degeneration unlocks a new and potentially limitless cascade to drive post-stroke neurons into a growth state. As we prepare in 2022 to move these compounds from the dish into animal testing, I marvel at the layered components of modern science. Nothing we are doing at this frontier is possible without the multiple groundbreaking studies that came before to pave the road. Oz, here we come.....