I obtained my medical degree from National Yangming University School of Medicine, Taiwan, was trained as a neurosurgeon in Taipei Veterans General Hospital (VGH), and obtained my PhD from Karolinska Institute of Sweden in 1996. My paper published in Science entitled ‘Spinal Cord Repair in Adult Paraplegic Rats: Partial Restoration of Hind Limb Function’ demonstrates a proof of concept that regeneration in the CNS is possible. I have been working in the field of neuro-regeneration ever since. I lead a neural regeneration research group based in VGH. We devise and improve our cocktail repair strategy by slow-release FGF-1 and nerve grafts. We further employed FGF-1 and/or repaired treatment in patients with chronic spinal cord injury (SCI) and have successfully completed Phases I and II clinical trials. The latest progress in my lab includes testing the use of minocycline in the acute post-traumatic stage, the application of chondroitinase ABC or CLT-28643 to reduce the scar formation of SCI, and stem cells (olfactory mucosa progenitor or bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells) applied with peripheral nerve bridges and FGF-1 in fibrin glue.
