Paralysed man walks again after cell transplant

[DR]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-29645760


What an incredible feat of science.

[wasabi]

Wonder how long before it will become mainstream?

[MrJim]

Wonder how long before it will become mainstream?

It'll be a while I think. The man chosen for this treatment had quite an unusual spinal injury, in that it was caused by a knife attack; the damage to his spinal cord was a relatively narrow lesion, only about 1mm I believe, which mean the nerves only had to grow a short distance. Also, I suspect his injury wasn't 'complete', i.e., his spinal cord wasn't entirely bisected, so the amount of nerve regrowth required to achieve motor & sensory return was reduced. Still, it's an incredible achievement, & hopefully such treatments will continue to improve.

[RobbieRoy]

This builds on work elsewhere - in the 20th Sept issue of New Scientist there is a story about a lady in Japan who received the first medical treatment based on induced pluripotent stem cells, eight years after they were discovered. This gives an idea of development times to get this far.

In this case the treatment was used to reprogramme some of the patient's skin cells so they turned into specialised eye cells that could treat age related macular degeneration - suffered by millions, including my mother-in-law and her siblings.

Apparently there are six people in total lined up for treatment in this pilot scheme which will show how well it works over the next couple of years. If it goes well, in addition to development of the technique used in the fabulous story of this man now walking, this could be the start of truly personal and effective medicine.

[BunsenHoneydew]

It'll be a while I think. The man chosen for this treatment had quite an unusual spinal injury, in that it was caused by a knife attack; the damage to his spinal cord was a relatively narrow lesion, only about 1mm I believe, which mean the nerves only had to grow a short distance. Also, I suspect his injury wasn't 'complete', i.e., his spinal cord wasn't entirely bisected, so the amount of nerve regrowth required to achieve motor & sensory return was reduced. Still, it's an incredible achievement, & hopefully such treatments will continue to improve.

He was featured on a Panaorama special on Tuesday night.

He went through six months of intensive physio-therapy before they did any operation, to establish whether this benefited him at all, and it didn't.

His spinal cord was almost completely severed, there was only a very small part at one side which had any connectivity (maybe 1 or 2 mm wide), and the gap between the main sections was almost half a inch long (they showed us this during the program, on this scale, it looked like a huge gap to fill.) They took nerve fibers from his ankle and placed those to fill the gap, and used thousands of micro-injections of cells which they had grown from one of his olfactory bulbs (which had been removed during a different operation) into the area.

Two years later, and he's walking with a frame, and he can now do the exercises which he couldn't do before. Feeling is slowly returning to his legs and you could also see a big difference in muscle mass in his legs.

Amazing program.

Steve

[MrJim]

He was featured on a Panaorama special on Tuesday night.

He went through six months of intensive physio-therapy before they did any operation, to establish whether this benefited him at all, and it didn't.

His spinal cord was almost completely severed, there was only a very small part at one side which had any connectivity (maybe 1 or 2 mm wide), and the gap between the main sections was almost half a inch long (they showed us this during the program, on this scale, it looked like a huge gap to fill.) They took nerve fibers from his ankle and placed those to fill the gap, and used thousands of micro-injections of cells which they had grown from one of his olfactory bulbs (which had been removed during a different operation) into the area.

Two years later, and he's walking with a frame, and he can now do the exercises which he couldn't do before. Feeling is slowly returning to his legs and you could also see a big difference in muscle mass in his legs.

Amazing program.

Steve

Thanks for the info, I missed the Panorama programme initially, but I've just watched it on iPlayer. It's really impressive progress, hopefully it'll lead to widespread treatment becoming available.

[MaddAussie]

One day they might be able to put a working brain in a politician!

Joking aside, this looks like its the first steps to something better I will be watching the Panorama program on iPlayer tonight I think

[RobbieRoy]

More on what more is going on elsewhere - six people in France with heart failure are about to be treated with stem cell based therapy that creates new heart cells for them. Also, in the US about 40 people with diabetes will be given stem cell based pancreatic cells which will mature into beta-islet cells that produce insulin.

Personally, I think we may actually be on the threshold of serious stem cell based therapies after two decades of research.

[Hoonigan]

It's an amazing thing to see, even if the "recovery" is very slight.
The Wright brothers started off with a very short flight and now we can fly to the other side of the planet at 500, 600, even 700mph...

It's exciting to watch as this develops as it could change many millions of lives!

[RobbieRoy]

It's exciting to watch as this develops as it could change many millions of lives!

I'm hoping that by the time my half worn out bits are fully worn out that there'll be a nice, well developed therapy to let me grow replacements (cartilage mainly).