Journal of Spine

Martin Oudega

Martin Oudega, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation
University of Pittsburgh, USA

Biography

Dr. Martin Oudega has received his PhD from the University of Leiden in Leiden, The Netherlands. He currently is an assistant Professor in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Neurobiology and Bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA. Dr. Oudega completed postdoctoral fellowships in Neurobiology at the University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California and at the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis at the University of Miami School of Medicine, Miami, Florida. He was an assistant professor in Neurological Surgery at the University of Miami School of Medicine and in Neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dr. Oudega was the director of the Animal Injury and Repair laboratory at the International Center for Spinal Cord Injury at The Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, Maryland. Currently, Dr. Oudega is directing the Spinal Cord Repair Laboratory that investigates the efficacy of cellular transplants, alone or in combination with axon growth-supporting interventions and/or artificial and natural biomaterials, to elicit anatomical and/or functional restoration after spinal cord injury. The overall goal of Dr. Oudega’s laboratory is to develop spinal cord repair strategies for translation into the clinic.

Research Interest

Dr. Martin Oudega research interests are in designing strategies to promote recovery after spinal cord injury using transplantation of repair-supporting cells such as bone marrow stromal cells or Schwann cells. We combine cell transplantation with interventions that decrease the naturally occurring growth-inhibition. Gene therapy and biomaterials (artificial or natural) are being used to promote repair directly and to augment the reparative abilities of cell transplants.