Amount Requested: $5,000,000.00

This funding will be used to support the Christopher Reeve Foundation’s programmatic spinal cord research activities in Houston and for continued support and expansion of North American Clinical Trials Network (NACTN) and its research partners. Both the University of Texas Health Science Center and the Methodist Hospital are existing centers in the NACTN program and both are located in the 9th Congressional District of Texas.  Spinal Cord Injury (SCI), with resulting paralysis, occurring in military and civilian life, is a major medical and societal problem. The need for a clinical network to conduct multi-center randomized trials of emerging therapies for SCI was addressed by the Christopher Reeve Foundation in 2004 when it formed the North American Clinical Trials Network (NACTN).  At the present time, NACTN has enrolled almost 300 acutely injured patients into its spinal cord data registry and will soon begin recruitment of patients in a phase I safety and pharmacokinetics trial of riluzole, a neuroprotective drug, FDA-approved for use in ALS patients.