ArticlebioRxiv : the preprint server for biology2026
Epidural Thin Film Implants of Polymerized Curcumin Downregulate Inflammatory Markers and Improve Functional Recovery After Spinal Cord Injury in Mice.
Article in bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
15 authors.
Funding
Abstract
We demonstrate for the first time that the natural antioxidant curcumin, when copolymerized with PEG and sebacoyl chloride, results in biomaterials that are solution processable into free-standing, epidurally implantable thin films, in mice with spinal cord injury (SCI). We show that these novel products can be epidurally implanted at the lesion site following incomplete contusive spinal cord injury in mice. In the polymeric form, these materials quench reactive oxygen species on-contact and retain their activity for vastly extended timescales relative to the curcumin small molecule itself, which is potent but short lived. The epidural thin film biomaterial implant resulted in a statistically significant improvement in functional recovery after SCI. Mechanistically, myelin staining revealed that the polymerized curcumin materials greatly enhanced white matter sparing. Immunohistochemical analysis also showed that expression of GFAP and Ib1a are significantly downregulated 200 μm rostral (but not caudal) to the injury site. Finally, bulk RNA sequencing analysis showed greatly reduced activation of pro-inflammatory gene expression program. The primary conclusion from these experiments is that polymerized curcumin epidural thin films effectively improve outcomes following SCI. The benefits of these novel biomaterials are demonstrated
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.