“To someone who has nothing, a little is a lot.”
These 10 words, spoken by renowned American surgeon Dr. Sterling Bunnell, have motivated countless medical professionals over the years.
Now, researchers at The Ohio State University are drawing on Bunnell’s philosophy to push the boundaries of neuroregeneration, says Dr. Amy Moore, chair of the university’s Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.
She collaborated with Dr. Daniel Gallego-Perez, a professor of biomedical engineering and surgery, and his lab to devise a gene-based treatment method for peripheral nerve injury.
Amy Colgan/The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center
Dr. Daniel Gallego-Perez
According to an April 2026 press release from the OSU Wexner Medical Center, peripheral nerve injuries “can leave patients with long-term weakness, numbness or loss of function” following traumatic events such as car accidents and combat exposure.
Moore says peripheral nerves – which extend beyond a person’s spinal cord to control their motor function and muscle movement – do not regenerate efficiently after suffering severe damage, regrowing at about one millimeter per day.
OSU’s new therapy has successfully stimulated blood vessel growth to support faster healing in mice. Down the line, this remedy could evolve to be a game-changer for human patients, Moore says.
“In the world of peripheral nerve(s), we’ve accepted poor outcomes because we didn’t know there was more to be done,” she says. “And now, we do. It’s (an) exciting time to see the interest match the need, which matches the technology’s advances.”
The treatment in question utilizes tissue nanotransfection, or TNT, and stems from research Gallego-Perez and other university scientists conducted in 2017. While studying cell reprogramming, he says, they found that skin cells could be changed into blood vessel cells.
This transformation helped prevent tissue necrosis and further inspired Gallego-Perez’s team to turn its attention to leveraging blood vessel formation in an effort to improve nerve tissue repair.
“We thought, ‘What if we take nerve injury models and we induce blood vessel formation, and then see if that blood vessel formation actually helps to improve the repair of damaged nerve tissue?’” Gallego-Perez says.
Induced blood vessel growth was shown to expedite recovery in animals with crush injuries, which damage nerves without completely detaching them. The next step was to determine whether the same approach could be used to treat segmental nerve defects, in which actual pieces of nerves are lost.
Segmental nerve defects are typically repaired by skilled plastic surgeons who use the patient’s own nerve tissue, or donor nerve tissue, to bridge the gap via a nerve graft procedure. But growth rate can be frustratingly slow, Moore says, compromising many patients’ quality of life.
“Peripheral nerve regeneration is an imperfect science, and even with the best repairs, we often aren’t left with perfect results of function,” she says. “We need to address these capabilities through research to improve outcomes for our patients.”
TNT can be a pivotal tool in overcoming this deficit, Gallego-Perez says. Tiny silicon chips, roughly 400 to 600 nanometers in diameter, carry three genes to injury sites. The carefully selected genes – Etv2, Fli1 and Foxc2 – are delivered through electrical pulses and quickly start boosting nerve repair.
“We usually are done within 100 milliseconds,” Gallego-Perez says. “So, within even less than a second, we’re done with deploying these drugs.”
TNT shows great promise because it can be administered so precisely in conjunction with nerve grafts, Moore says.
“I think the technology is exciting because it’s unique,” she says. “It’s unique in the sense of how it gets delivered (and) that it’s safe and targeted specifically to the tissue type.”
Researchers’ biggest goal is ensuring TNT can be safely scaled for human use, Gallego-Perez says. No significant concerns have been raised in the mouse trials, but gaining Food and Drug Administration approval will take time.
TNT’s initial success illustrates the importance of betting on bold science and interdisciplinary research at a university level, says Gallego-Perez, giving credit to Moore as well as to Ana Salazar-Puerta, the first author of the manuscript.
“I’m the senior author (of the study), so I get to talk about it, but I wouldn’t be able to talk about it if none of the authors had done their part to advance the science,” he says.
Beyond academic distinction, however, Gallego-Perez and Moore agree that one goal must reign supreme: making a tangible, positive difference in patients’ lives.
“This is something that only happens when we allow people to take risks and think big,” Gallego-Perez says.
Lucy Lawler is a contributing writer at CityScene Media Group. Feedback welcome at feedback@cityscenemediagroup.com.
