A research team from the AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków, headed by Dr Eng. Urszula Stachewicz, together with partners from Turkey and Denmark, under the PIECRISCI project, will develop new materials with piezoelectric properties to support the treatment of spinal cord injuries.

The research will be financed by the M-ERA.NET network, which has concluded the international competition M-ERA.NET 3 Call 2021 for projects in the field of materials science and engineering of materials.

Ongoing research into spinal cord injuries includes drug therapies, cell transplantation, gene therapy, and tissue engineering. The combination of several treatment strategies may enable partial recovery, with the consequent improvement of patients’ quality of life.

According to AGH, the PIECRISCI project proposed a novel treatment approach based on “functionalized biomaterials to stimulate the regeneration of neurons by incorporating exosome / CRISPR / Cas9 complexes into piezoelectric biomaterials”.