Paralysed Man Darek Fidyka Walks Again: World-First Treatment Uses Nose Cells to Repair Spinal Cord Injury

Paralysed men Darek Fidyka is able to walk again after a pioneering cell transplant treatment(YouTube)

Paralysis sufferers around the world have been offered the possibility of a cure for the first time in history, after a new therapy pioneered by British scientists has allowed a man with a severed spinal cord to walk again.

Darek Fidyka, a Bulgarian man who was paralysed after a knife attack in 2010, is now able to walk using a frame.

He told BBC News that walking again was an "incredible feeling" and said it was like being "born again".

The treatment, which was carried out by surgeons in Poland in collaboration with scientists at University College London, involved transplanting cells from Fidyka's nasal cavity into his spinal cord.

The therapy used olfactory ensheathing cells, OECs, which are specialist cells that form part of the sense of smell. The cells repair damage to nasal nerves.

In the first procedure of its kind, doctors removed one of Fidyka's olfactory bulbs (the neural structure that the cells come from) and grew cells in the culture.

Then, doctors implanted the harvested cells into an 8mm gap in the spinal cord of Fidyka.He had been confined to a wheelchair after an attacker sliced through his spine,leaving just a thin strip of scar tissue on the right.

After the assault, Fidyka was given a less than 1% chance of the slightest recovery by doctors.

Around 100 micro-injections of OECs were made above and below the injury. The surgeons then took four strips of nerve tissue from his ankle and placed them across the gap in the cord.

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Paralysed Man Darek Fidyka Walks Again: World-First Treatment Uses Nose Cells to Repair Spinal Cord Injury