Cited by 1,851Nerve injury and regenerationSpinal Cord Injury ResearchNeurogenesis and neuroplasticity mechanisms

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 104 of the 104 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Astrocyte scar formation aids central nervous system axon regeneration

Open access

Abstract

Transected axons fail to regrow in the mature central nervous system. Astrocytic scars are widely regarded as causal in this failure. Here, using three genetically targeted loss-of-function manipulations in adult mice, we show that preventing astrocyte scar formation, attenuating scar-forming astrocytes, or ablating chronic astrocytic scars all failed to result in spontaneous regrowth of transected corticospinal, sensory or serotonergic axons through severe spinal cord injury (SCI) lesions. By contrast, sustained local delivery via hydrogel depots of required axon-specific growth factors not present in SCI lesions, plus growth-activating priming injuries, stimulated robust, laminin-dependent sensory axon regrowth past scar-forming astrocytes and inhibitory molecules in SCI lesions. Preventing astrocytic scar formation significantly reduced this stimulated axon regrowth. RNA sequencing revealed that astrocytes and non-astrocyte cells in SCI lesions express multiple axon-growth-supporting molecules. Our findings show that contrary to the prevailing dogma, astrocyte scar formation aids rather than prevents central nervous system axon regeneration.

Overview

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1038/nature17623

Cites

104 of 104 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Verification

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Citations

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Show all 104 references

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Items 101–200 of 1,002

Metadata

Authors
Anderson, M. A., Burda, J. E., Ren, Y., Ao, Y., O’Shea, T. M., Kawaguchi, R., Coppola, G., Khakh, B. S., Deming, T. J., & Sofroniew, M. V.
Affiliations
  • Tongji University (CN)
  • University of California, Los Angeles (US)
Corresponding author
Sofroniew, Michael V.
Venue
Nature
Published
2016-03-30
Volume
532
Issue
7598
Pages
195-200
ISSN
  • 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
  • 1476-4687
OpenAlex
W2335534790
Cited by
1,851
References
104
Citations by year
2026: 116 · 2025: 163 · 2024: 180 · 2023: 159 · 2022: 234 · 2021: 250 · 2020: 224 · 2019: 159 · 2018: 162 · 2017: 136 · 2016: 62
FWCI
97.34
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Nature (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
  • Infoscience (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) (submittedVersion)
  • Infoscience (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
Funders
  • National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH099559, MH104069, MH099559A, DP1MH104069)
  • National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NS084030, NS057624, NS060677, R01NS060677, R01NS057624, P30NS062691, R01NS084030)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Nerve injury and regeneration
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Clinical Neurology › Spinal Cord Injury Research
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Developmental Neuroscience › Neurogenesis and neuroplasticity mechanisms
Keywords
axon regeneration, spinal cord injury, central nervous system injury, corticospinal axons, sensory axons, serotonergic axons, hydrogel delivery, laminin, axon growth inhibition, astrocytes
MeSH terms
Animals, Astrocytes, Axons, Central Nervous System, Cicatrix, Female, Models, Biological, Nerve Regeneration, Chondroitin Sulfate Proteoglycans, Spinal Cord Injuries, Reproducibility of Results, Genomics, Mice

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review