Grant: CIHR Fellowship

The lack of effective treatment options for spinal cord injury underlines the critical need for new drug targets. After spinal cord trauma, neuroinflammation in the spinal cord is a common disease mechanism, making it a promising target for novel therapies. A major challenge in developing better treatments to improve function after spinal cord injury is that we need better biomarkers that can detect disease mechanisms, such as neuroinflammation. To address this issue, we aim to develop "spinal cord thermometry", which can be done using a non-invasive MRI scan in awake individuals. We believe that spinal cord thermometry can help us understand the amount of inflammation ongoing in the spinal cord after injury. This is, conceptually, very similar to how body temperature indicates if you have an infection. We will develop the necessary methods to measure spinal cord thermometry and apply this in individuals with spinal cord injury and multiple sclerosis. This work will help researchers identify disease mechanisms in the spinal cord and ultimately find better treatments for spinal cord injury.