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Phoenix666 writes:

The combination of graphene nanoribbons made with a process developed at Rice University and a common polymer could someday be of critical importance to healing damaged spinal cords in people, according to Rice chemist James Tour.

[...] "We've developed a way to add water-solubilizing polymer chains to the edges of our nanoribbons that preserves their conductivity while rendering them soluble, and we're just now starting to see the potential for this in biomedical applications," he said. He added that ribbonized graphene structures allow for much smaller amounts to be used while preserving a conductive pathway that bridges the damaged spinal cords.

Tour said only 1 percent of Texas-PEG consists of nanoribbons, but that's enough to form a conductive scaffold through which the spinal cord can reconnect.

Texas-PEG succeeded in restoring function in a rodent with a severed spinal cord in a procedure performed at Konkuk University in South Korea by co-authors Bae Hwan Lee and C-Yoon Kim. Tour said the material reliably allowed motor and sensory neuronal signals to cross the gap 24 hours after complete transection of the spinal cord and almost perfect motor control recovery after two weeks.

The graphene nano-ribbons provide a conducting scaffold that allow spinal cords to reconnect.

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