According to research conducted by the Christopher Reeve Foundation, approximately 1,275,000 people in the United States are currently paralyzed because of spinal cord injuries. Associate Professor of Bioengineering Dr. Mario Romero-Ortega is trying to get them on their feet again by fixing damaged nerves.
“A friend had a car accident several years ago and I witnessed the devastating reality of spinal cord injury paralysis,” he said. “Since then I’ve been motivated to understand the lack of spontaneous regeneration in the central nervous system.”
Dr. Romero-Ortega has spent more than a decade conducting research on nerve growth and regeneration. He began while earning his Ph.D. in Neuroscience at Tulane University. Following graduation, he became a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School (UTSW) in Dallas. In the Department of Anesthesiology, he developed ways to entice the regeneration of sensory neurons and overcome the adult spinal cord’s nature to inhibit regrowth.
He then joined UT Southwestern’s Center for Developmental Biology and the Kent Waldrep Foundation Center for Basic Research on Nerve Growth and Regeneration, and became research associate member of the Christopher Reeve Foundation.”As postdoctoral student, I had the great opportunity to join an international team of renowned scientists focused on overcoming the consequences of spinal cord injury. This experience shaped my scientific career, expanded my view of the field and, most importantly, convinced me that with continued research, paralysis will be eventually a curable condition.”
In 2002, following his teaching and research work at UTSW, Dr. Romero-Ortega became director of the Regenerative Neurobiology Research Division at the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children in Dallas. Here, he assembled of team of researchers that developed a biosynthetic nerve implant method to repair peripheral nerve gap injuries that result from nerve tissue loss as a result of trauma or tumor resection.
“Our work on peripheral nerve repair took an interesting turn with support from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and in collaboration with UT Dallas and the Zyvex Corporation,” said Dr. Romero-Ortega. “Our team guided the regeneration of amputated peripheral nerves into electrode arrays and carbon nanotubes, with the goal of developing a regenerative neural interface for the wireless neural control of artificial arms and hands.”
In addition to teaching and conducting research, Dr. Romero-Ortega also finds time to supervise two post-doctoral students, four doctoral candidates and four master’s students. Twenty-six of his 26 peer-reviewed papers published in technical journals, and he is frequently the invited speaker at conferences and seminars.
Dr. Romero-Ortega is a member of the Biomedical Engineering Society, the IEEE’s Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, the Tissue Engineering Society International and the Society for Neuroscience. He also sits on the editorial board for Frontiers in Neuroengineering and the National Science Foundation’s Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems Review Panel.
