Now we have shown we can do it, not only in rats but in one man, theres no reason to restrict this to spinal cord. We have opened the door to a future which is terrifyingly large. We have knowledge which could be of great value, we cant stop now, he said. Prof Raisman said he thought the procedure could pave the way for mass treatment of spinal cord injuries, but cautioned: Whether I am right or wrong has to be proved and will be proved first in the first stage by us; we have to repeat this. He said he was absolutely frightened by the huge potential of the treatment and now had a responsibility to see if the treatment could indeed be used to help others. Darek Fidyka. (Photo: BBC) John Haycock, a Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Sheffield, said: It paves the way for cell-based therapies in conditions of the nervous system previously thought impossible to treat, not just spinal cord injuries but other conditions such as stroke. This is however early days, and much more research on how effective and reproducible this treatment is will be needed for many years to come. However, Dr … Continue reading →

........................................................................................................................................................................................ A man paralyzed from the chest down in a knife attack is walking again after undergoing surgery using cells responsible for the sense of smell, marking an advance in the search for treatments for spinal injuries. Darek Fidyka, 38, received the cells after failing to recover from a stabbing in the back in 2010, according to University College London, whose doctors developed the procedure. The technique involves using olfactory ensheathing cells and placing them in the spinal cord. The study gives hope to the thousands of people each year who suffer a severe spinal cord injury and must live the rest of their lives with permanently damaged body functions. Such injuries typically occur during sports or automobile crashes and there is no approved treatment to repair them. We have now opened the door to a treatment of spinal cord injury that will get patients out of wheelchairs, said Geoff Raisman, chairman of neural regeneration at the UCL Institute of Neurology and leader of the U.K. research team. Our goal now is to develop this first procedure to a point where it can be rolled out as a worldwide general approach. The cells used were discovered by Raisman in 1985 … Continue reading →