May 10, 2025
Surpassing Expectations
Restoring movement for people with stroke and spinal muscular atrophy
Look to the Stars
By Strategic Communications
A stroke more than a decade ago paralyzed Heather Rendulic on her left side. Rather than woe-is-me thinking, she embraced a glass-half-full mentality and rehabbed her way back into walking and living a full life. She took that positivity and hopefulness into a clinical trial in 2021 at the University of Pittsburgh’s multidisciplinary Rehab Neural Engineering Labs that offered her the chance to regain function in her left arm. Doubt lingered before getting started, she admitted, and it wasn’t long before she broke down in tears.
It turned out that the experimental surgery that used a spinal implant to deliver pulses of electricity to activate nerve cells inside the spinal cord didn’t meet her expectations.
It far exceeded them.
The spinal stimulation therapy that forced Rendulic to shed tears of joy recently won Federal Drug Administration (FDA) approval to move into a second trial phase where it will be tested longer term—as a potential permanent implant.
Rendulic picks up and moves a can of soup, something she wasn't able to do with her left hand for nearly a decade after suffering a massive stroke.
The sensory nerves from the arm and hand send signals to motor neurons in the spinal cord that control the muscles of the limb. Stimulating these sensory nerves amplifies the activity of muscles that have been weakened by stroke.
Millions have watched a YouTube video of Rendulic using her arm to lift and move a can of tomato soup, among other tasks.
The spinal stimulation therapy that forced Rendulic to shed tears of joy recently won Federal Drug Administration (FDA) approval to move into a second trial phase where it will be tested longer term—as a potential permanent implant. Rendulic used the technology temporarily.
Marco Capogrosso, assistant professor of neurological surgery in the School of Medicine, leads the group conducting the research.
The lab has also been using spinal stimulation to treat spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). SMA is an inherited neurodegenerative disease that manifests in progressive death and functional decline of motor neurons, nerve cells that control movement by transmitting signals from the brain and the spinal cord to the muscles. Through time, the loss of motor neurons causes gradual muscle weakness and leads to a variety of motor deficits. Yet, spinal stimulation trial participants experienced improved strength, gait and endurance. Capogrosso’s team is hoping to get FDA approval to move that study into a second phase.
“We’re getting closer and closer to clinical approval for SMA and stroke,” says Capogrosso.