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The Department of Neurological Surgery at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine/ The Miami Project to Cure Paralyis was ranked #3 in the nation for 2009 based upon National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding.
There are abundant and well-funded research opportunities at The Miami Project and the larger neuroscience community of the Medical Center.
The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis
In 1985, Barth A. Green, M.D. and NFL Hall of Fame linebacker Nick Buoniconti helped found The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis after Nick’s son, Marc, sustained a spinal cord injury during a college football game. Today, The Miami Project is the world’s most comprehensive spinal cord injury research center, housed in the Lois Pope LIFE Center, a Center of Excellence at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. The Miami Project’s international team of more than 200 scientists, researchers and clinicians take innovative approaches to the challenge of spinal cord injury.
The Miami Project’s Human Clinical Trials Initiative will take discoveries found to be successful in laboratory studies and fast track them to human studies with the approval of the FDA. The Miami Project is well positioned and confident that we have the expertise, knowledge and drive to navigate through the FDA process and initiate new human clinical trials involving Schwann cell transplantation. This trial will be based in part on published work in which Miami Project scientists showed up to 70% return of normal walking function in experimental models. For more than 23 years, The Miami Project has worked carefully and diligently towards this goal and the results show that the time is right to make this important step into humans.
The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, a Center of Excellence at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, is a comprehensive scientific research program centered on spinal cord injury. Because of the Department’s affiliation with the University’s Miami Project, patients of the Spine Institute benefit from research developments that are not routinely available at other centers.