U2FP CureCast

In episode 45 Jason and Matthew speak with long time activists and twins, Jason and David Carmel. David was injured over two decades ago while vacationing in Mexico. He has gone on to achieve a successful career in biotech. Jason is a PhD / MD researcher at Columbia University researching activity based therapies and electrical stimulation. Their unique connection as twins weaves in and through th...

Jason and Matthew interview Dr. Gregoire Courtine, the Chief Science Officer of GTX Medical and Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Dr. Courtine has been researching spinal cord stimulation for over 20 years and is hoping to bring that research to clinical relevance with emerging clinical trials with GTX’s LIFT (non-invasive electrical spinal cord stimulation) and GO2 (targeted...

Jason and Matthew have a conversation with Bob Yant, 39 years into a spinal cord injury and longtime advocate for spinal cord injury research. Bob founded Cure Medical, a catheter company based in California that donates 10% of its net income to medical research. He is also the founder and president of Axonis Therapeutics, a company committed to delivering a therapeutic for the treatment of SCI. B...

Jason and Matthew interview Dr. Ethan Perlstein, formerly the Chief Science Officer at the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation and Founder of Perlara. We talk about Ethan’s work to develop a ‘roadmap to cures for paralysis’, along with his experience, reception and impressions for where the cure movement can and should go next. BIO: Over the course of the last decade, first as a graduate student...

Jason and Matthew interview Dr. Susan Harkema, from the University of Louisville. We discuss her long standing research using the strategy of neuromodulation, neuroplasticity and locomotor training to discover and understand the potential for functional recovery after Spinal Cord Injury. For more information about Dr. Harkema and the full complement of her work and research activities, click here:...

Jason and Matthew interview Drs. Kelly and Roy Cho to discuss COVID-19, their practical understanding of the virus, developing treatment practices and how that intersects with folks who have impairments as a result of disability in general and SCI specifically. Here are some online resources they provided for more information: - http://www.academyscipro.org/covid-19-resources-for-sci-professionals...

"What is the goal here? What are we trying to do?...and to me it still is and has always been to basically restore near normal function to people that have chronic spinal cord injury…that’s what I wanna talk about….what I’ve learned is that I have to start with that. And I have to start with the following sentence, which is: I believe that’s possible and what I wanna do is to be a part of making t...

Jason and Matthew interview Dr. Harold Punnett (co-founder and member of the Board of Directors) and Paul Brennan (President and CEO) from NervGen Pharma. They discuss how Dr. Punnett’s daughter-in-law’s Spinal Cord Injury led to the connection with Dr. Jerry Silver (click the link to hear more about the science from episode 19 with Dr. Jerry Silver) and eventually the founding of the company, the...

Jason and Matthew interview Dr. Sasha Rabchevsky from the University of Kentucky and Dr. Michael Lane from the Drexel College of Medicine. They are both Spinal Cord Injury researchers, and if interested in the specifics of their research you can find earlier podcast interviews with them here. In this interview we talk about how the COVID-19 shutdown has affected the research effort and how researc...

Matthew talks with Kelsey Peterson, the woman behind the documentary film SUBMERGED - formerly titled “The Cure Map”. Matthew and Kelsey talk about her pathway to advocacy and the genesis of the Cure Map project, the recent announcement of being the recipient of the highly competitive ITVS Open Call award, the effects of the COVID-19 troubles and lots more. Follow Kelsey on social media here: http...

Jason and Matthew interview Conquer Paralysis Now founder, Sam Schmidt. We discuss Sam’s history as a race car driver, his injury, the genesis for the foundation and his recent project Driven, an Activity Based Fitness center in Las Vegas Nevada. Please reach out to us at curecast@u2fp.org

In Epsiode 34 of U2FP's CureCast podcast, we introduce Jason Stoffer. We talk with Jason about who he is, where he hails from and how he came to be the new co-host on the podcast. We also talk with Kate Willette, author of Don’t Call It a Miracle: The Movement To Cure Spinal Cord Injury, about her new projects. It's an intimate and wide-ranging conversation that we think you’ll enjoy. You can emai...

Check out Episode 33 of CureCast. We (Kate Willette, Jason Stoffer and Matthew Rodreick) talk with Dr. Mohamad Bydon from the Mayo Clinic. You may have seen the Good Morning America piece focused on 'super responder' patient one in the Phase 1 Clinical Trial using Adipose Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells. We wanted to understand more about the study, how to go beyond the media hype and get an unders...

Kate, Matthew and Jason Stoffer (our new podcast host) have a conversation with Dr. Stephen Strittmatter, The Vincent Coates Professor of Neurology and Professor of Neuroscience at Yale School of Medicine. His discoveries over the last two decades of research led to the founding of ReNetX, who are applying that technology to discover if neurons can regrow in the chronic injury (in humans) by elimi...

Matthew and Kate talk with Kathy Allen and Sandra Mulder, the first two participants in the EStand Trial in Minnesota. Kathy and Sandra (as well as Jered Chinook who participated in the Mayo Clinic’s Epidural Stimulation study) were invited to attend the American Spinal Injury Association Conference in April to share their personal experiences as part of a conversation facilitated by U2FP’s Execut...

We talk with David about the EStand Trial using Epidural Stimulation for spinal cord injury, the trial design, progress, next steps, and its connection the Cure Advocacy Network. The informal title of this episode is ‘The Transformation of Suffering’, which is David’s eloquent and personal description of why he’s doing what he does and what he is hoping to accomplish with the trial and treatment o...

Matthew and Kate have a conversation with Dr. Lyn Jakeman, Director in the Division of Neuroscience at the National Institutes of Health. We spoke with Lyn a week ahead of NIH's SCI 2020: A Decade of Disruption. We discuss what led to the conference, why now and what they hope to accomplish from it. We also talk about why they chose the title, 'Decade of Disruption', and how that informed the plan...

Matthew and Kate talk with Dr. David Magnuson (University of Louisville) and Dr. Karim Fouad (University of Alberta) about how discoveries are translated, funded, published....and what are some of the problems inherent to getting science to work for us. Links discussed: SCI 2020: https://meetings.ninds.nih.gov/Home/Index/21041 and check back for links to follow up on Kentucky's SCI research fundin...

Matthew and Kate interview Dr. Dennis Bourbeau from the Cleveland FES Center (http://fescenter.org/about-fes-center/who-we-are/investigators/dennis-bourbeau-phd/) about his strategies and collaborations to restore bladder function using stimulation. We discuss a number of studies he's involved in as preparation for his presentation at Working 2 Walk Science and Advocacy Symposium...and hope to ope...

A stimulating conversation with Dr. Andrei Krossioukov from the University of British Columbia and Icord. Kate and Matthew talk with him about spinal stimulation to seek recovery of autonomic functions for chronic spinal cord injury: bowel, bladder, seal function, blood pressure regulation.

Dr. Karim Fouad is a Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Alberta and Canada Research Chair for Spinal Cord Injury. Kate and Matthew talk with Karim about how he ended up in this field and the more recent research that he has been involved with: the discovery of pericytes and their role in inhibiting blood flow after injury and what might be done about that; the potential for...

Check out this great discussion Kate and Matthew have with Dr. Nicholas Jeffery from Texas A & M. We talked with Dr. Jeffery about the recent clinical trial for paralyzed dogs using chondroitinase along with his future work. After you listen to our interview, go take a look at his presentation from Working 2 Walk 2015.

If we’re working from a 17th century model of publishing science, then what effect does that have on translating science to clinical relevance? Kate and I had a mind expanding conversation (for laypeople) around this idea with Dr. Adam Ferguson, Professor and Principal Investigator at the Brain and Spinal Injury Center at UCSF. You may have already seen his fascinating presentation at Working 2 Wa...

Kate and Matthew interview New Mobility magazine’s Senior Editor Ian Ruder. We discuss his role, the history of the publication and how SCI research fits into the story.

Kate and Matthew interview longtime SCI writer, blogger, journalist and advocate Sam Maddox. Sam was a correspondent for Time, Money and People magazine and a former journalism professor at the University of Colorado – Boulder. His latest project is a publication called, First 90 Days to assist people in getting the best information at the time of injury.