It is not yet known whether it is possible to generate extensive neuroplasticity in a system that has been injured for a long time and now contains many more complications such as abundant scar tissue, large holes in the spinalcordand where many spinalnerve cells and long range nerve fibres have died or degenerated.
For her pioneering approach to biomaterial development to regenerate damaged nerve tissue and for her development of a new method to deliver drugs to the spinalcordand brain.
In 1952 Jonas Salk (1914-1995) and Albert Sabin (1906-1993) raced to come up with a vaccine for poliomyelitis--a virus that causes inflammation of nerve cells in the spinalcord, which can cause paralysis, atrophy of the skeletal muscles and death.