One of our founders, Frank Reynolds, experienced a paralyzing spinal cord injury (SCI) in 1992. After spending years in bed, with no hope from the conventional medical options, and inspired by the movie Lorenzo’s Oil, Frank began his research of SCI literatures and over a period of two years he created a plan for recovery based on Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

After 15 months of hard work and the love and dedication of his wife Robin, he was able to live life outside of his body brace and he was restored to a normal way of living. Although never free of pain from nerve damage he has lived life with passion since his return to stable health and is now focused on providing fellow SCI patients the possibility of hope.

In June 2005, during his graduate studies in the Sloan Fellows program at MIT, Frank met world renowned scientist, inventor, and innovator Bob Langer Sc.D., one of the 14 Institute Professors of MIT. Frank inquired about projects in the Langer lab that might be focused on spinal cord injuries. Bob told Frank about the work he was doing at Langer Lab with Dr. Yang (Ted) Teng at Harvard’s Neurosurgery Department and VA Boston’s SCI Research Division on novel approaches to treating SCI.

InVivo Therapeutics was founded based on the new approaches and concepts that have been recently developed by the Langer Lab and the Teng Labs, and we take very seriously our commitment to the science and to people living with SCI who are waiting for similar recovery of functioning to what Frank has experienced.

We believe that:

• Incremental discoveries are the most realistic opportunity for improving the quality of living for people with SCI. For decades there has been strong hope on hitting the home run, with a “cure” for paralysis, yet the majority of patients identify incremental improvements to their health at the top of the wish list. We will focus on the wishes of people living with SCI, and focus to realize them.
• SCI research should focus not only on single cellular and molecular events but also on preventing the secondary loss of function and on reestablishing neurophysiology—including sensory, motor, bowel, bladder, autonomic, sexual, bone, and muscle functions—with the mitigation and elimination of complications, particularly respiratory deficits, bladder disorder, pain, spasticity, pressure sores, and depression, with the ultimate goal of fully restoring to the individual the levels of activity and function that he or she had before injury.
• Our research toward addressing the consequences of spinal cord injuries focuses on a novel progression of neural tissue and chemical engineering: preventing further tissue loss, maintaining the health of living cells, replacing cells that have died through apoptosis or necrosis, growing axons and staging/ensuring functional connections, and strengthening and/or re-setting up synapses that restore the neural circuits required for functional recovery – enhancing “neuroplasticity”.

These strategies have led us to a range of therapeutic targets and priorities for SCI research, each of which could theoretically be pursued individually and in combinations. InVivo will focus on these paths of discovery to expedite a portfolio of products and services to meet the clinical demands.