Reeve Foundation's Scientific Advisory Board: Chet Moritz, Ph.D.
From the time Chet Moritz was a young boy, he was drawn to helping people with physical limitations. He attended a school in Seattle, WA, that accommodated children with disabilities.
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“Starting in about 3rd grade, I had a lot of exposure to kids who used wheelchairs for various reasons,” says Dr. Moritz, Ph.D. Hwang Endowed Professor, University of Washington Departments of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Rehabilitation Medicine, and Physiology & Biophysics. “I’d always felt this desire to help them in some way — not to walk again, but rather a sort of kinship that fed my interest in health sciences.”
At first, Dr. Moritz thought he wanted to be a physical therapist. But he got bitten by the research bug as an undergraduate when he began studying how large insects control the muscles used to flap their wings. “Once I got into the lab and started sticking electrodes in the muscles of these tiny insects, I was hooked,” Dr. Moritz says.
Becoming a Lab Rat
Trained as a biologist, Dr. Moritz’s initial interest focused on understanding the engineering aspects of movement control — how the brain and spinal cord coordinate movement over rocky versus slick terrain, for example.
To that end, during his first post-doc, Dr. Moritz -- whose Ph.D. is in integrative biology -- focused on analyzing how individual neurons innervating muscles are controlled – meaning how they stimulate muscles into action. With his second post-doc, he wanted to “fix the system,” to begin building technologies that could help people move again.
Dr. Moritz and his colleagues started conducting studies on brain computer interfaces (devices), trying to figure out how to extract information from the brain about how animals intended to move. “We came up with this idea that maybe we could record neural messages from intact areas of the brain and reroute the signals below the spinal cord injury to stimulate paralyzed muscles electrically in real time,” Dr. Moritz says.
The approach worked and with that simple detour, scientists were able to hot-wire damaged nerves in animals and restore voluntary movement to paralyzed limbs. The logical next step: building neural prostheses, or neural prosthetic devices for humans with spinal cord injuries (SCIs).
From Bench to Bedside
Historically, young scientists shied away from SCI research. They had the sense that there was no forward movement in the field and, as a result, SCI-related research projects wouldn’t get funded.
“But dating back 40 years ago, Dr. Reggie Edgerton, a researcher and neurobiologist at UCLA, showed that if you stimulate the spinal cord below the level of injury, animals with no connection between their brain and their lower body could make stepping movements on a treadmill,” Dr. Moritz says. “That early research is now beginning to bear fruit and there have been tremendous breakthroughs in SCI research over the past 10 to 12 years.”
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In Dr. Moritz’s lab alone, researchers have learned that combining transcutaneous stimulation devices with occupational therapy of the hands and arms — including many repetitions of functional tasks — substantially improves hand function among people with SCI. What’s more, after 10 to 24 such practice sessions, people continued to experience the benefits of improved motor function, even when the device was turned off.
“That was the watershed moment for us when we realized that transcutaneous stimulation combined with occupational therapy might allow people to recover enough function to return to their hobbies more than a decade after their injuries,” Dr. Moritz says. “Some of our participants were even able to resume activities that require a lot of fine motor skill like playing the electric guitar or oil painting. This led directly to the ONWARD Up-LIFT study, the first large-scale pivotal trial of non-invasive spinal cord stimulation technology.”
According to Dr. Moritz, this work is just one example of the magic that happens when scientists combine tools from diverse fields — from neuroscience and engineering to cell biology and physical therapy — to advance treatments for spinal cord injury. Ultimately, the hope for people with SCI is that neural prostheses will become what pacemakers are for people with heart disease: a seamless device that dramatically improves their quality and quantity of life.
Dr. Moritz is part of our newly launched Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation Scientific Advisory Board. It is comprised of senior and junior investigators from across the globe and in numerous scientific sectors and serves as a sounding board for the Foundation, offering innovative ideas and honest feedback as we search for the most promising research and development opportunities that will provide the greatest impact for community members.
Photo Credit: Matt Hagen