Optical control of dysfunctional muscles

Many spinal cord injuries and motor neuron diseases result in complete/permanent muscle denervation. Such muscle are permanently paralyzed. Restoring function to such muscles using electrical stimulation is highly problematic and thus rarely used clinically. We propose to test a new technology using light activated channels known as channelrhodopsin 2 (ChR2) to restore function to permanently denervated muscles. Skeletal muscles will be injected with a virus encoding the ChR2 gene or injected with myoblasts expressing the ChR2 protein. In both cases, light activated contractions will be compared to the force of contractions elicited upon nerve stimulation. We propose that one of these two methods will result in muscle with light activated contractile strength as strong and neurally evoke contractions.