Today we’re talking with Dennis Bourbeau. Dennis is a highly regarded clinical and academic researcher in the area of bowel/bladder/and sexual function. He works for the Louis Stokes Veterans Administration Hospital and the Metro Health County Hospital in Cleveland, OH. He’s also a faculty member at Case Western Reserve University. Dennis has graci…

Today we are talking to V. Reggie Edgerton, a Professor Emeritus of Nuerobiology at UCLA and co-founder of the spinal stimulation company, SpineX. Reggie Edgerton is a giant in the field of neuromodulation. Some have called him the father of spinal stimulation, and his influence can be found in...More info: https://u2fp.org/get-educated/curecast/ep…

Today we are celebrating our 100th episode of U2FP’s CureCast podcast! No guest would be more appropriate for that celebration than Kate Willette. Kate and Mathew started the podcast 6 years ago and she co-hosted the first 34 episodes. Kate also wrote the book “Don’t Call it a Miracle” which is required reading for anyone with a spinal cord injury.…

Today we are bringing you part 1 of the “Your Voice Here” series. This collection of interviews was recorded during U2FP’s 2023 Science and Advocacy Symposium in Minneapolis. In this episode, you’ll hear from Physical Therapist, PhD and Researcher, Leanne Rees; Neuroscience student Jason Biundo; and Motivational speaker and Onward Marketing Consult…

You might be wondering why we are interviewing the founder of the National Breast Cancer Coalition, Fran Visco. Well, it turns out that she is the person primarily responsible for the formation of the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program (CDMRP) out of the Defense Department. One of their many programs is SCIRP - the Spinal Cord Injury…

Today we are talking with Jordan Squair and Mark Anderson about their September 2023 paper published in the journal Science: “Recovery of walking after paralysis by regenerating characterized neurons to their natural target region”. The work is akin to the first gardeners figuring out how to make plants grow. But instead of plants, it's injured neu…

Today we’re talking with Dr. Kajana Satkunendrarajah. Kajana is an associate professor and researcher at the Medical College of Wisconsin. She is also an ally of our legislative efforts in Wisconsin to pass an SCI Research Grant bill there. We discuss Dr. Satkunendrarajah’s NIH R01 grant submission to study her lab's recent discovery of cervical le…

Today's conversation features my co-host Jason Stoffer, our new development director, Quinn Brett, and their filmmaker and adventure buddy Robbie Prechtl. Last year, Jason and Quinn completed a rim to rim trip of the Grand Canyon on handcycles(!). They were accompanied by Rob and a team of friends who came along for the adventure and assistance. In…

Every year, U2FP puts on an annual science and advocacy symposium. It's a two day event where we bring together people from the SCI community, researchers, clinicians, industry representatives, and funders in an effort to educate our community about the science of curative therapies. We also hope it provides them with a better understanding of the …

Today we are speaking with Dimitry Sayenko. Dimitry is an MD, PhD and an associate professor in Neuromodulation and Nuerosurgery at Houston Methodist Hospital, in Houston, Texas. Our conversation starts off with an exploration of Dimitry’s fascinating beginnings, studying muscle atrophy and bone density in the context of aerospace in both Russia an…

Today’s conversation is a highly anticipated one. For years we’ve been hearing about the groundbreaking work of Jerry Silver to render the injury scar permeable to axon growth. That work led to development of the pharmacologic NVG-291 and the associated company NervGen Pharma. The research has finally advanced to a human SCI clinical trial, led by …

Today we’re talking with Ceren Yarar-Fisher, PhD, PT. Dr. Yarar-Fisher is Vice Chair of Research of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in the Dept. of Neuroscience at The Ohio State University. She’s also the director of clinical research at the Belford Center for Spinal Cord Injury. In this episode, we start off exploring the unique origins of C…

Our guest today is Meghan Moynihan. Megan is the executive director of the Institute for Functional Restoration, or IFR, a not-for-profit organization based at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. The IFR seeks to further functional recovery in spinal cord injury by developing commercial strategies to get that research to market. We …

Our conversation today is with David McMillan, an assistant professor at the University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine, Department of Neurological Surgery, and Director of Education and Outreach for The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis. Jason and Julie recorded this interview with David onsite at this year's Science and Advocacy Sympo…

Today’s episode is a bit different. We’re turning the mic towards our own work here at U2FP to let you in on what’s cooking. Jason and Matthew begin by discussing some unique developments with our Team U2FP racers involving extreme heat, adaptive trikes, and a trek along the rim of the Grand Canyon(!). We also discuss U2FP’s upcoming symposium, inc…

Today we are talking with Yi-Kai Lo and Katie Velez of the SCI research and tech company, Aneuvo. Anuevo has been busy working with investors, the FDA, and multiple research sites to clinically deploy the ExaStim, a novel transcutaneous stimulation device. The goal of their current ASPIRE study is to improve upper limb function. We discuss Dr. Lo’s…

The topic of today’s conversation is the Vagus nerve. In Latin, Vagus means wandering or straying, which this conversation does a fair bit of due to the interesting subject matter. Our guide on this path is Dr. Patrick Ganzer of the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis. Dr. Ganzer gives us a great overview of the vagus nerve including its possible evolu…

Today's guest is Dr. Kim Anderson, a friend and a very influential researcher who we have a really great conversation with. We begin with the story of her spinal cord injury along with her early studies and research, and that leads into one of the things she’s known for: her work on patient preference as a result of directly surveying the spinal co…

Today, our guest is Louise Phipps Senft. Louise is the mother to a son with an SCI, and founder of Blink of an Eye, a nonprofit organization that is committed to addressing that initial moment when everything changes after a spinal cord injury. A big theme of this conversation is trauma. And one of the things that arises in our dialogue with Louise…

What you are about to hear is one of the richest conversations we’ve ever had on the show. Our guests today are Gabriel Rodreick (Matthew’s son) and Julie Censullo (CureCast producer) who are here to discuss an audio-art project they created together called “Life Begins in the Stillness” - which we play at the top of the episode. We then dive into …

CureCast co-host Jason Stoffer was injured 5 and ½ years ago. Earlier this year, his friend Lewis Johnson sustained a spinal cord injury. The similarities are uncanny: they were both in the same career field; they both went to the same inpatient hospital; and they both attended the same inpatient rehab facility. For Jason, the big question on the t…

What if we could take all the neural trash that forms in the spinal cord after an injury, the stuff that hinders connectivity, and turn it into treasure? This is the idea behind cellular reprogramming. Today's podcast guest, Dr. Arshak Alexanian, is a biochemist and the Chief Scientific Officer at the Wisconsin biotech firm, Cell Reprogramming & Th…

Today's guest on the podcast is Kym Eisner, the executive director of the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation. This year happens to be the Neilsen Foundation’s 20th anniversary. For those who are unfamiliar with the Foundation, its namesake Craig H. Neilsen, was an entrepreneur who sustained a spinal cord injury in 1985 and formed the foundation in 2002. T…

Have you ever wondered what it feels like to participate in an SCI clinical research trial? How do you find out about these trials? How do you find out about these trials? Does anyone make a recovery? What are some reasons that you might take the leap - or not?On today’s podcast, you’ll get some answers to these questions and many more. Our guests,…

Today’s episode is a rebroadcast of our conversation with Grégoire Courtine from two years ago. Dr. Courtine has been pivotal in the successful application of epidural stimulation in humans with SCI, in both his research and device commercialization. In this episode, we talk about Dr. Courtine’s motivation to study spinal cord injury and epidural s…

Today our guest is Dan Hellenbrand, a renaissance man of sorts. Dan sustained a cervical injury (C5-6) as a carpenter back in 2003 and ended up going back to school to become a SCI researcher, as well as an advocate for curative therapies. We have an interesting conversation about early physical therapy, the role of belief and competition with your…

Today's conversation is a rebroadcast of our interview with Samuel Stupp back in 2022. We thought it was a good time to revisit this conversation, given Dr. Stupp’s most recent publication, which you can learn more about below in the summary review done by U2FP’s science writer, Sam Maddox. More info and research links here: https://u2fp.org/get-ed…

Today’s episode revisits important elements and loose ends of spinal cord stimulation (SCS) that didn’t fit neatly into the arc of our first three conversations on this topic. We’re calling this installment the ‘Junk Drawer’ - not because we consider these loose ends to be junk, but because they represent the multi-directional potential of stimulat…

Today we talk with Bill Murphy, a bioengineer out of the University of Wisconsin Madison. We recently met Dr. Murphy when he came to the Wisconsin Capitol in support of our $3M SCI Research Grant bill back in January. Bill’s team has been working on developing biomaterials to improve the body’s ability to receive and utilize Chondroitinase ABC (ChA…

This is the third and final (for now) installment of our 101 tour of spinal stimulation. We're joined again by Sam Maddox, U2FP's Scientific Advisory Board Director and veteran science journalist. Today, we discuss the commercialization of spinal stim, detailing the path that these therapies will need to traverse to arrive at the market. We talk ab…

We’re continuing our conversation around spinal cord stimulation in part 2 of this multi-episode series with Sam Maddox, a long-time SCI science writer and U2FP’s Scientific Advisory Board Director. Today we’re going to focus on what’s happening currently with some spinal stimulation researchers, what clinical outcomes they are targeting, how they …

Jason and Matthew talk with U2FP Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) Director and Science Writer, Sam Maddox in the first part of our series on Spinal Stimulation. We’ve been thinking about the need for a discussion on what spinal stimulation is, why it's been studied so extensively, who are the influential scientists and players in the space, the traj…

Jason and Matthew interview Jim Harris, a wilderness photographer who was injured in 2014. Jim was recently featured in Outside Magazine regarding his experience with psilocybin and its connection to some restored mobility. This conversation is a follow-up to our previous podcast with Dr. Jessica Nielson on the potential use of psilocybin after SCI…

The research of psychedelics as a therapeutic for anxiety, depression, and PTSD has gained a lot of traction over the last decade. Given their potent effects on the nervous system, what are the unique benefits and possible side effects of psychedelics for the SCI population? And further, what is their potential to elicit functional recovery? If you…

Matthew and Jason talk with Ann Van de Winckel, a researcher and physical therapist at the University of Minnesota, Medical School, who is doing fascinating work to help restore body awareness below the level of injury - yes, you read that right - using cognitive multisensory rehabilitation (CMR). Dr. Van de Winckel’s work is showing reductions in …

This episode features Thomas Cloyd, who is competing in the Bank of America Chicago Marathon for Team U2FP next Sunday, October 9th. Thomas’ reasons for joining Team U2FP go well beyond just this race. His history with U2FP goes back almost a decade when he helped Matthew Rodreick and others in the SCI community pass the SCI/TBI Research Grant bill…

Jason and Mathew talk with Andrew Park, a clinician-researcher at Craig Rehabilitation Hospital in Denver, Colorado. Jason met Andrew while in Denver for one of U2FP’s Cure Advocacy Network stakeholder meetings last February. During that meeting, Andrew’s passion for his work became evident. In this podcast, we talk about what’s behind that passion…

Jason and Matthew talk with Lucia Webb, U2FP’s Operations Director. We focus on a seemingly minor aspect of our work - our racing and fundraising initiative, Team U2FP - and breakdown why it’s critical for so much of what we do, especially the legislative bills we’ve passed through our Cure Advocacy Network. We talk about the impact of Team U2FP fo…

Jason and Matthew interview Dr. Camillo Castillo, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Physician at Frazer Rehabilitation Hospital in Louisville KY along with his Clinical SCI Navigation team: Emily Coons, Brendan Doksa and Heather Connor.We are raising a simple question about the introduction of spinal cord stimulation (SCS) to the clinic: are we …

Jason and Matthew interview Dr. Uzma Samadani, a neurosurgeon working in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Dr. Samadani participated in the EStand trial (https://www.estand.org/) along with David Darrow, Ann Parr and Taye Nettoff. We decided to interview Dr. Samadani based on her experience of implanting epidural stimulators in people with SCI - as part of h…

We are dedicating this podcast episode to Franklin Elieh, co-founder of NorCalSCI (https://norcalsci.org/news/2022/franklin). Franklin died this past month after living for decades with an SCI. He embodied the critical characteristics of empathy, systems thinking and deep connection to the community that all successful advocates share. He also live…

Jason and Matthew talk with Samantha Troyer, an SCI peer mentor in Wisconsin who joined up with U2FP’s Cure Advocacy Network (CAN) to become a legislative advocate there. Sam is joined by our CAN Manager, Jake Beckstrom. We talk about the current effort to pass an SCI research funding Bill in Wisconsin, its attendant ups and downs, unique challenge…

Jason and Matthew speak with Samuel Stupp, a Professor of Materials Science, Chemistry, Medicine, and Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern University. You may remember reading about Dr. Stupp late last year when news about his ‘dancing molecules’ used in a preclinical model of acute spinal cord injury circulated widely. We discuss Dr. Stupp’s dis…

Jason and Matthew talk with Michael Lane (Researcher at Drexel College of Medicine) and Jake Chalfin (SCI advocate and chair of the PA Spinal Cord Advisory Research Council,) as we continue with part 2 of our series on the experience of SCI community consultants in research labs. This discussion continues our exploration around the exciting and uni…

Jason and Matthew interview Dr. Murray Blackmore (Marquette University) and Nancy Nichols (person with lived experience of SCI) about Nancy’s addition to the Blackmore Lab as a consultant. We talk about the relationship that developed, the impact it's had on the Blackmore Lab, and the impact relationships like this could have on the wider research …

Coming soon ...Oleh Matthew Rodreick & Jason Stoffer

Jason and Matthew interview Dr. Barry Komisaruk, Neurophysiologist from the Psychology Department at Rutgers University. Barry has been researching sexuality for over 50 years and is maybe best known for the seminal work: The Science of Orgasm. We talk about the history of his research and discoveries, the historical challenges around sexual functi…

Jason and Matthew talk with Megan Detloff (SCI researcher at Drexel College of Medicine) and Bethany Kondiles (SCI researcher at ICORD). They talk about the evolution of the International Online SCI Research Seminar (IOSCIRS) in response to the pandemic and as a forum for SCI researchers to stay abreast of one another's work. But they have also beg…

Jason and Matthew have a conversation in response to the last two conversations on sex after SCI. They talk about where the conversation seemed to be going and after some reflection, where it ought to go. Listen in and don’t forget to check out the information about this year’s Annual Science and Advocacy Symposium in Salt Lake City at u2fp.org AND…

Jason and Matthew continue the conversation from episode 52 with SCI community members, Quinn Brett, Kelsey Peterson and Thomas Cloyd. They discuss each guest’s experience with sex after injury, where they got their information and what they’ve learned and continue to learn. This conversation starts to set the stage for our upcoming episodes with S…