Researchers’ quest to find cure for spinal cord injury

“Everyone thinks about curing spinal cord injury as like an Everest or a moon landing. Everest is particularly useful because you don’t know your exact route until you leave, but you’ve a rough idea where you want to go. And you’re exploring as you go.”

Tom Brady, Programme Director of the Cure Programme at the CatWalk Trust, is describing the informally named ‘Everest Goal’.

Preparing to reach that goal – to find a cure for the injured spinal cord – is based on a partnership between CatWalk Trust and a specialised group at the University of Auckland headed by Professor Darren Svirskis and known as the “Spine Squad”. Together they form the Cure Programme.

This is not CatWalk Trust’s first involvement with the University. A year after the Trust was established in 2005, they made their first research grant to Dr Simon O’Carroll, one of the few scientists in New Zealand at the time looking at spinal cord injury. In 2011, the Trust partnered with the University in establishing the Spinal Cord Injury Research Facility based in the Centre for Brain Research. The Spine Squad and Cure Programme are the next generation of research, supported by CatWalk Trust and its donors.

It was that joint initiative that attracted Darren Svirskis. Based in the School of Pharmacy, Darren’s background is in drug delivery, getting drugs to where they are needed in the body. In spinal cord injury he saw an unmet need and realised there were technologies he believed could help.

In CatWalk Trust he found active rather than passive funders – a group that goes out looking for good researchers, not just in this country but internationally. In 2023, the Trust contacted Darren and asked: If money was no object, what would you do right now that would provide a tangible step in curing spinal cord injury? Darren described a programme of work, made up of different projects working as a team costing $8.4 million over five years. The Trustees asked, “What will be delivered in five years?”

Darren’s response: “We’ll have an injured rat running again.”

“One,” says Tom, “we liked his commitment. Secondly, it was the first time ever anyone had puta line in the sand.”

They also liked that the research was focused on dealing with the injury and spinal cord directly – regeneration, rather than a machine to bypass or recover lost function.

From a wide range of projects, four research streams ultimately became the Cure Programme. One is to use pharmaceutical agents slowly released directly onto the spinal cord. The second is electric field treatments or electroceuticals. The third, cell-based therapies. And the fourth is ultrasound. The four streams progress in parallel, a co-ordinated approach with the ability to pivot depending on which of the streams is showing the greatest benefit, to combine streams that are working well and prune off streams that are not.

The vision after five years is that the successful technology or combination of technologies will be ready for translation to clinical trials. Darren and his researchers have found their face-to-face updates with the Trust very different to the more common paper-heavy reports to grantmakers.

“CatWalk is an organisation all about people and that certainly drives and motivates you. It keeps us very focused when someone in a wheelchair is there asking, ‘How’s it going?’ They’re a wonderful sounding board, not because they’re researchers but because they’re an intelligent group of people from diverse areas and backgrounds who ask smart questions that often challenge us and make us reconsider how we’re doing things.”

They also, he adds, have a surprising tolerance for risk – “they understand research is research”.

Tom agrees. He’s worked on many boards, non-profits particularly, and says CatWalk Trust is the “least risk adverse” he’s known. “Because they’re focused on the goal and if we deliver it, we’ve fulfilled our purpose and we can disband. We’ve found the environment of this University very entrepreneurial,” he continues. “We’re sending more money this way than anywhere else, and it’s because the environment’s fostering the right people. We see Darren and team at the top of the game, as world leaders. And we want to keep them together in New Zealand."

“If you think about this group as our All Blacks, everyone wants to poach an All Black. But what makes the All Blacks strong is that they are there as a team and they attract the best. And I think we’ve got the makings of that in the Spine Squad.”