Harnessing the will to walk with spine injury

The lab rat is helping lead the charge for spinal injury research. Picture: ThinKStock Source: Supplied

IT was one small step for a rat, but it might be one giant leap for mankind.

Rats paralysed by spinal injuries have learned to walk, and run, again after groundbreaking treatment that "awakens the spinal brain" and helps the spine repair itself.

Australian experts yesterday hailed the successful research as bringing science to "the edge of a truly profound advance in modern medicine" by allowing paralysed people to walk again.

Swiss scientists, who spent five years investigating how the brain and spine can adapt to injury, injected a chemical solution into the rats that stimulated neurons in their spines.

The cocktail of drugs, aided by electrical stimulation, strengthened the signals normally sent by the brain down the spinal cord. When the test rats, which had severely damaged but not severed spinal cords, were placed in special harnesses, they could walk.

"After a couple of weeks of neurorehabilitation with a combination of a robotic harness and electrical-chemical stimulation, our rats are not only voluntarily initiating a walking gait, but they are soon sprinting, climbing up stairs and avoiding obstacles," Gregoire Courtine, from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausann, said.

The breakthrough also relied on Dr Courtine's previous research, which showed a rat's spinal column could take over modulating leg movement even when separated from the rat's brain. This showed that only a very weak signal from the brain was needed for the animals to initiate movement.

Dr Bryce Vissel, head of Neurodegenerative Diseases Research Laboratory at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, said yesterday: "There will be hurdles before we see this translated to real effect in people, but the study by Gregoire Courtine and his team suggests we are on the edge of a truly profound advance in modern medicine: the prospect of repairing the spinal cord after injury."

SpinalCure Australia executive director Duncan Wallace said: "This study strengthens our belief that finding a cure for this devastating condition is now only a matter of time and sufficient funding.

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Harnessing the will to walk with spine injury