Building Infrastructure to Accelerate Transfer of Basic Research in Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) to Clinical Practice: North American Clinical Trials Network.

摘要

Spinal cord injuries are catastrophic to the patient, family members, and society at large. Estimated lifetime care costs vary based on severity of injury (and age at injury). Expenses for a C1-C4 quadriplegic injured at age 25 are estimated to be $4.37 million and for a paraplegic injured at 25, approximately $2.1 million. That December 2010 figure does not include indirect costs such as lost wages, fringe benefits and productivity, which are estimated to approach $66,626 (2010 dollars) annually per patient (2). Annually, paralysis and SCI cost an approximate $40.5 billion, which is a 317% increase from estimated costs in 1998. (Cahill et al, 2009) What none of these figures adequately capture however is the enormous personal human toll taken on the injured, their families, communities and the larger society. The field of spinal cord research continues to burgeon with academic laboratories dedicated fulltime to pursuit of strategies to repair the damaged spinal cord. In the case of the Reeve Foundation alone, its International Research Consortium on Spinal Cord Injury has given rise to more than 30 new independent spinal cord labs headed by former Consortium Associates (graduate and postdoctoral students). The federal website clinicaltrials.gov lists 531 spinal cord clinical studies (recruiting, active not recruiting, unknown, completed). There are now biotech and pharmaceutical companies with portfolios that include spinal cord; among these are Novartis, BioAxone BioSciences, NeuralStem Inc., Acorda Therapeutics, StemCells Inc., Asubio Pharmaceuticals and InVivo Therapeutics.