ABSTRACT
Currently there is no available therapy for efficient recovery from spinal cord injury (SCI), resulting in a permanent paralysis beneath the injury site. Mammals exhibit a very limited regenerative capacity; nevertheless, non-mammals like amphibian and teleost fish are capable of regeneration after severe SCI. This chapter focuses on Xenopus laevis as a model organism to study spinal cord regeneration. The advantages over other models, description of injury paradigms and methods that provide an opportunity to determine the necessary mechanisms for an effective regeneration process, and the mechanisms that fail in non-regenerative animals are presented. A brief summary from the first discoveries to the most recent about spinal cord regeneration, centering on the ones developed in Xenopus laevis, is also included. Particular attention is given to the differential response between regenerative and non-regenerative Xenopus laevis stages: (1) spinal cord cellular composition and their response to SCI, (2) presence of neural stem progenitor cells and their role in spinal cord regeneration, and (3) the differential biological processes involved in SCI and spinal cord regeneration and their correlation with other studies. Finally, a discussion about the pitfalls in this area of research and the future directions on spinal cord regeneration in Xenopus laevis is presented.
