Dr. Beattie has been interested in the neural mechanisms of recovery after brain and spinal cord injury for many years. He and his wife and collaborator, Dr. Jacqueline Bresnahan (also a member of the Neurosurgery faculty), have recently moved their laboratory to the Brain and Spinal Injury Center (BASIC) at UCSF from Ohio State University. Their group is known for developing preclinical models to study the recovery of function after spinal cord injury, and for studies of the biology of neural injury and repair. Current projects include analyses of the interrelationship of post-injury inflammatory events and excitotoxic cell death, the roles of oligodendrocyte death and replacement in recovery after injury, and the development of stem and progenitor cell transplantation strategies for promoting recovery after spinal cord injury. The laboratory continues to develop new animal paradigms for modeling human neurotrauma. BASIC's location at the SFGH along with the physician-scientists of UCSF Neurotrauma program will promote basic and clinical science interactions, and new animal models will be generated based on knowledge of current treatments and outcomes in the human neurotrauma arena. For example, there is an emerging interest in post-injury edema, studied in rodents using high field MR imaging. Acute studies of interventions that can reduce edema in animal studies may be taken directly to clinical studies in the neurotrauma ICU. Dr. Beattie's goal is to help translate the laboratory's expertise in the biology of injury and recovery to treatments that can be implemented and tested in neurotrauma patients at SFGH and other centers.