Joost Verhaagen – författare

Handbook of Clinical Neurology: Spinal Cord Injury summarizes advances in the clinical diagnosis, monitoring, prognostication, treatment, and management of spinal cord injuries. More specifically, it looks at new and important developments in areas such as high-resolution noninvasive neuroimaging, surgery, and electrical stimulation of motor, respiratory, bladder, bowel, and sexual functions. It also reviews the latest insights into spontaneous regeneration and recovery of function following rehabilitation, with emphasis on novel therapeutic strategies, such as gene therapy, transcranial stimulation, brain-machine interfaces, pharmacological approaches, molecular target discovery, and the use of olfactory ensheathing cells, stem cells, and precursor cells.

Organized in five sections, the book begins with an overview of the development, maturation, biomechanics, and anatomy of the spinal cord before proceeding with a discussion of clinical diagnosis and prognosis as well as natural recovery, ambulation, and function following spinal cord injury. It then examines clinical neurophysiology in the prognosis and monitoring of traumatic spinal cord injury; medical, surgical and rehabilitative management of spinal cord trauma; and some new approaches for improving recovery in patients, including restoration of function by electrical stimulation, locomotor training, and the use of robotics. Other chapters cover cell transplantation, artificial scaffolds, experimental pharmacological interventions, and molecular and combinatorial strategies for repairing the injured spinal cord. This volume should be of interest to neuroscience and clinical neurology research specialists and practicing neurologists.

This volume aims to explore the latest developments in adeno-associated viral and lentiviral vectors as well as the gene therapy strategies for the most common neurological disorders, followed by chapters that include step-by-step guides to viral vector-based gene delivery in animal models used in the authors’ laboratories. Although safe gene manipulation in neural cells can be achieved, it may still be years away from efficacious gene-based treatment of neurological disorders such as Parkinson''s and Alzheimer’s diseases due to the complexity of the underlying genetic/molecular mechanisms and the difficulty of developing reliable animal models. Gene Delivery and Therapy for Neurological Disorders seeks to aid researchers in this vital work.  Written in the popular Neuromethods series format, chapters include the kind of detailed description and expert implementation advice that leads to success in the lab.

Meticulous and authoritative, Gene Delivery and Therapy for Neurological Disorders serves as an ideal guide for researchers attempting to explore the potentials of gene therapy for neurological disorders.