title: Clinical canine spinal cord injury provides an opportunity to examine the issues in translating laboratory techniques into practical therapy.
abstract: METHODS
  Review.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To highlight the value of investigating the effects of putative therapeutic interventions in clinical spinal cord injury (SCI) in domestic dogs.
  
  
  METHODS
  England, UK.
  
  
  METHODS
  Many experimental interventions in laboratory rodents have been shown to ameliorate the functional deficits caused by SCI; the challenge now is to determine whether they can be translated into useful clinical techniques. Important differences between clinical SCI in human patients and that in laboratory rodents are in the size of the spinal cord and heterogeneity of injury severity. A further key issue is whether the statistical difference in outcome in the laboratory will translate into a useful difference in clinical outcome. Here, we stress the value of investigating the effects of putative therapies in clinical SCI in domestic dogs. The causes of injury, ability to categorise the severity and methods available to measure outcome are very similar between canine and human patients. Furthermore, postmortem tissue more rapidly becomes available from dogs because of their short lifespan than from human patients.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The role that investigation of canine SCI might play is illustrated by our preliminary trials on intraspinal transplantation of olfactory glial cells for severe SCI.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This canine translational model provides a means of 'filtering' putative treatments before human application.
authors.affiliation: Department of Veterinary Medicine, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
authors.forename: N D
authors.initials: ND
authors.lastname: Jeffery
authors.forename: P M
authors.initials: PM
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lakatos
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Ibanez
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Ito
authors.forename: R J M
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Franklin
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D017690:Cell Transplantation / Q000379:methods; D004059:Diffusion of Innovation; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D004285:Dogs; D006801:Humans; D009416:Nerve Regeneration / Q000502:physiology; D009457:Neuroglia / Q000637:transplantation; D009830:Olfactory Bulb / Q000166:cytology; D013119:Spinal Cord Injuries / Q000473:pathology / Q000601:surgery / Q000662:veterinary*; D013673:Technology Assessment, Biomedical