UGA to host Spinal Cord Workshop in April

The University of Georgia will serve as the site for the second Spinal Cord Workshop to be held on Saturday, April 4 from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at the Paul D. Coverdell Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences.

Organized by the Bedford Stem Cell Research Foundation and hosted by the Regenerative Bioscience Center and BHSI, the workshops bring together medical and scientific experts in order to identify barriers to reversal of the neurologic damage that follow spinal cord injury, and describe what is needed to overcome those barriers. This event serves as a follow-up to the inaugural Spinal Cord Workshop held at UGA in March 2008, titled “Spinal Cord Injury: What Are The Barriers To Cure?.”

Speakers expected to return include Hans Keirstead,  associate professor of anatomy and neurobiology, Reeve-Irvine Research Center, University of California at Irvine; Wise Young, professor and chair, Department of Cell Biology and Neuroscience, Rutgers University, and director, W.M. Keck Center for Collaborative Neuroscience; Steven Stice, professor, GRA Eminent Scholar, director of the Regenerative Bioscience Center at University of Georgia and CSO, Aruna Biomedical Inc.; Jose Cibelli, professor, Department of Animal Science and Department of Physiology, Michigan State University, and director, Cellular Reprogramming Laboratory; and Ann Kiessling, associate professor of surgery, Harvard Medical School, and director, Bedford Stem Cell Research Foundation.

Created in 1996, the Bedford Stem Cell Research Foundation is a Massachusetts-based public charity and biomedical institute that exists to conduct stem cell and related research for diseases and conditions that currently have no cure.
Additional support for the workshops has been provided by the Shepherd Center in Atlanta and Millipore, Inc.

Registration information for the 2009 workshop, as well as video from the 2008 workshop talks, is available online at spinalcordworkshop.org.