Cover legend: Confocal micrograph taken from the lesion core of a spinal cord injury in the rat showing reparative macrophages (green) associated with a key angiogenic cytokine, vascular endothelial growth factor (red), following extracellular matrix modification by means of chondroitinase gene delivery. Bartus et al. demonstrated a novel interaction between matrix modification and modulation of the inflammatory response following spinal cord injury. For more information, see the article by Bartus et al. (pages 4822–4836).