What does "Disruptive" mean? Thoughts on the NIH SCI 2020 meeting

On September 12 and 13, 2019, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), as well as other federal agencies and several private foundations sponsored a stake holder meeting at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Bethesda campus with a provocative title: “SCI 2020: Park and his colleagues discovered that PTEN KO makes retinal ganglion cell axons regenerate (Park et al., 2008); Harkema, Edgerton and colleagues’ studies suggest that epidural stimulation can enable walking in SCI patients (Harkema et al., 2011); Lu, Tuszynski and colleagues’ demonstration that neural stem cell transplants produce dramatic axon growth and behavioral recovery (Lu et al., 2012). Sasha Rabcjevsky was disruptive, saying that the focus on acute therapies is misguided; 95% of animal studies use acute models, yet > 95% of SCI patients are in the subacute or chronic state! Other panelists discussed the variety of genes, molecular mechanisms and cell therapies that had proven effective in animal models.