Lack of reporting standards delays progress in developing robust therapies for SCI, TBI

Progress in developing robust therapies for spinal cord injury (SCI), traumatic brain injury (TBI) and peripheral nerve injury has been slow. A great deal has been learned over the past 30 years regarding both the intrinsic factors and the environmental factors that regulate axon growth, but this large body of information has not yet resulted in clinically available therapeutics.

Prof. Lemmon and his team from University of Miami in USA proposed this therapeutic bottleneck has many root causes, but a consensus is emerging that one contributing factor is a lack of standards for experimental design and reporting. The absence of reporting standards, and even of commonly accepted definitions of key words, also make data mining and bioinformatics analysis of neural plasticity and regeneration difficult, if not impossible. These findings, published in the Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 9, No. 1, 2014), this short review will consider relevant background and potential solutions to this problem in the axon regeneration domain.