The Marsala Lab research program focuses on characterization of patophysiology and treatment of several spinal and brain neurodegenerative disorders including:

• Spinal ischemia-induced spastic paraplegia
• Chronic spinal trauma-induced motor dysfunction
• Chronic peripheral nerve and spinal cord injury-induced neuropathic pain
• Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)

Some of these studies provided a well-defined scientific base for the initiation of the human clinical trial to test the cell replacement-based therapies to modulate spinal-injury-induced motor dysfunction and ALS. A recently developed novel technique of spinal subpial gene delivery is being used to characterize the gene-therapy-based treatments for ALS and neuropathic pain in small and large pre-clinical animal models.