**1. Introduction**

Traumatic Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a devastating disease that results in severe neural disruption and severe disabilities below the site of injury. Patients are unable to regenerate neural tissue after injury, leading to a lifelong disability. The pathophysiology of SCI is complex, consisting of a primary insult to the cord followed by a secondary cascade of events characterized mainly by inflammation, ischemia, ionic imbalance, excitotoxicity, and apoptosis [1]. This disease comprises a significant portion of health care expenditure in the United States, with an estimated annual cost of 7.7 billion dollars [2]. According to the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center (NSCISC) in 2019, the incidence of SCI was about 54 cases per million people in the United States. SCI is caused by motor vehicle collisions in about 50% of cases, but other common etiologies include falls (30%), violent crime (11%), and sports-related injuries (9%) [2, 3]. SCI induced paraplegia and quadriplegia causes a significant

physical and emotional toll on those inflicted, thus, there is a need for optimized strategies to better treat these patients. Although there has been significant investment into development of novel therapeutic strategies to improve outcomes for these patients, there remains little with proven benefit besides aggressive supportive care.
