About InVivo
One of our founders, Frank Reynolds, experienced a spinal cord injury (SCI) in 1992. After spending years recovering, with no hope from the conventional medical options, and inspired by the movie Lorenzo’s Oil, Frank began his own research of SCI literatures. Over a period of two years, he created a plan for recovery based on physical medicine and rehabilitation.
After 15 months of hard work, supported by the love and dedication of his family, Frank was restored to a normal way of life and is living outside his body brace. He has lived life with passion and is now focused on creating hope for fellow SCI patients.
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 on novel approaches to treating SCI with Dr. Yang (Ted) Teng of Harvard’s Neurosurgery Department and VA Boston’s SCI Research Division.
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 the people living with SCI who are waiting for recovery of functioning similar to what Frank has experienced.
The InVivo Philosophy for Spinal Cord Injury Research
We believe that:
- Incremental discoveries are the most realistic opportunity for improving the quality of living for people with SCI. For decades many have hoped someone would “hit the home run,” finding a “cure” for paralysis, yet the majority of patients see incremental improvements to their health as a top priority. We will focus on the wishes of people living with SCI and concentrate our efforts on realizing 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. In addition, we seek the mitigation and elimination of complications due to SCI, particularly respiratory deficits, bladder disorder, pain, spasticity, pressure sores, and depression. Our ultimate goal is to fully restore the level of function and activity that each individual had prior to injury.
- Our research revolves around 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, to be pursued individually and in combination. InVivo will focus on these paths of discovery to expedite development of innovations to ease the burden of living with SCI.