The scientists at Imperial College London have discovered a mechanism that allows them to repair and regenerate nerves in the central nervous system after a spinal cord injury. The scientists started by studying the peripheral nervous system, and that's when things got started.

The PNS (peripheral nervous system) grows back about 30% of its nerves when damaged. It allows the return of some feeling and movement and because the central nervous system doesn't do this, the scientists wanted to understand and see if they could use the same process that PNS does on the CNS.

They discovered that the PNS has a chemical process that signal and jumpstart new nerve growth and that a protein called P300/ CBP-associated factor, or PCAF, triggers this process.

In the experiment, mice had an increased number of nerve cells that grew back, which means, there's a potential for growing back nerves in the central nervous system even after a spinal cord injury.

[Imperial College London Credit: Wiki Commons]