Excerpt from NEUROREPORT  19 December 2003 Vol 14 No 18 2463-2467 Copyright© Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. 

Guanosine promotes myelination and functional 
recovery in chronic spinal injury. 
Shucui Jiang,CA Mohammad I. Khan, Yao Lu, Jian Wang, Josef Buttigieg, Eva S Werstiuk, Renata Ciccarelli 1, Francesco Caciaglil and Michel P Rathbone. 
Department of Medicine, McMaster University Health Sciences Centre4N71, 
1200 Main Street West, Hamilton, ON Canada L8N3Z5; 
1 Department of Biomedical Science, University of Chieti, Chieti I-66013, Italy 
CA Corresponding Author: jiangs@univmail.cis.mcmaster.ca 
Received 12 June 2003; accepted 15 August 2003 

This work has shown that the naturally occurring compound guanosine stimulates the precursor cells in the spinal cord around the site of injury to proliferate and to differentiate into new myelin-forming cells - without stem cells. 
  
The author notes that the first unequivocal evidence of spontaneous myelin repair in the mammalian CNS was reported by Bunge et al.[17] and confirmed by others [18]. 

17 - Bunge MB, Bunge RP and Ris H. Ultrastructural study of remyelination in an experimental lesion in the adult cat spinal cord. J Biophys Biochem Cytol 10, 67-94 (1961). 
18 - Scolding N. Regenerating myelin. Brain 124, 2129-2130 (2001). 

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