Fluker was just 11 years old when doctors discovered a peripheral nerve sheath tumor.

CNN: Students dress like Superman to remember football player

Arvind Mahankali, a 12-year-old seventh-grader from New York City, came in third when he misspelled "schwannoma, " a tumor of the sheath of a peripheral nerve.

CNN: June 1, 2012 -- Updated 1329 GMT (2129 HKT)

But in the early 1980s McGill University researcher Albert Aguayo showed that rat spinal nerves would grow like crazy inside a piece of peripheral nerve that was grafted onto the spine.

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