Over the past few decades, tremendous advances have been made in our understanding of the pathobiology underpinning the devastating impairments of traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI). Much of this scientific research has focused on animal models of SCI, and comparatively little has been done on human SCI, largely because biospecimens from human SCI patients are not readily available. This paucity of scientific inquiry in human SCI represents an important void in the spectrum of translational research, as biological differences between animal models and the human condition need to be considered in the preclinical development of therapeutic approaches.
The International Spinal Cord Injury Biobank (ISCIB) is a multi-user biorepository with the mission of accelerating therapeutic development in traumatic SCI through an improved biological understanding of human injury, and the vision of serving as a global research resource where human SCI biospecimens are shared with researchers around the world.
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