In September, 1996, Dr. Richard P. Bunge, director of the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis and a close friend and colleague died of cancer. In his memory, an annual lectureship was established for the Neuroscience Program at the University of Miami.
Richard P. Bunge, M.D., was at the forefront of research efforts to understand and improve the processes of repair in the nervous system. In his student days, he discovered that myelin could be broken down and then reformed in the adult mammalian spinal cord, a revolutionary idea in the 1960s. This work led to discovery of the mechanism of CNS myelination and the demonstration of the connections between forming myelin and oligodendrocytes. He and his colleagues developed a cell culture system in which myelination could be studied systematically, enabling fundamental discoveries elucidating the process underlying Schwann cell-neuron interactions. These included control of proliferation and the role of the cell of Schwann in promoting regeneration of central and peripheral neurons. He proposed, in 1975, the idea that cellular grafts, particularly of Schwann cells, could be used to improve repair in the CNS. He pioneered studies of the biology of adult human Schwann cells as a prelude to possible autotransplantation into sites of spinal cord injury in the human. In 1990, he initiated an extensive and detailed characterization of the pathology of human spinal cord injury, which provided novel and fundamental insights into the nature of that injury, including demyelination and axonal degeneration.
After obtaining his M.D. from the University of Wisconsin Medical School in 1960, Richard Bunge went to Columbia University to learn the technique of nerve tissue culture with Dr. Margaret R. Murray, a pioneer in this field. He then held faculty appointments in Anatomy at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons from 1962 to 1970, and in Anatomy and Neurobiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis from 1970 to 1988, before becoming Scientific Director of the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis. While in Miami, The Miami Project gained national recognition within the scientific community as a focused, cohesive center for research related to spinal cord injury. Dr. Bunge held the Kinetic Concepts Distinguished Chair in Neurosurgery. He received numerous honors, including Javits research awards from the NIH, the Friedrich von Rechlinghausen Award for the Advancement of Medical Sciences in Neurofibromitosis, the University of Wisconsin Medical Alumni Association Medicals Alumni Citation, the Gordon Conference of Myelin Chairman's Award, and the prestigious Wakeman Award for his pioneering work in tissue culture and cellular biology of fetal cells, transplantation, and detailed descriptions of human spinal cord injury.
