People suffering from chronic paralysis may soon be able to walk again thanks to spinal cord implants created in groundbreaking research at Tel Aviv University.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
A peer-reviewed paper by a research team in Israel published on Monday in the journal Advanced Science described an experimental approach for repairing spinal cord injuries. Researchers at Tel Aviv University attempted to repair the spinal cords in injured mice using adult human cells that had been engineered to behave like embryonic stem cells, which can develop into any type of cell in the body.
The animals' spinal cords had formed scar tissue, which has impeded any benefit of such cells in earlier studies. The researchers first allowed the stem cells to flourish in a special test tube environment, only transplanting them into the mice after the cells had matured into a small network of nerve cells and after the scar tissue had been surgically removed.
They reported achieving an 80% success rate in restoring movement and sensation to the paralyzed mice. All the recently paralyzed mice tested were able to regain their ability to walk within three months, while 12 of the 15 mice with chronic paralysis showed marked improvement in their ability to walk six weeks after receiving the implant.
The researchers said they aim to launch human trials within a few years.
Noting the researchers had been in talks with the US Food and Drug Administration, Dvir said, "It's exciting because it can eventually reach clinical trials [and] actually help people, not just work on animals.
"People who are paralyzed will have hope that they will walk again," he said.
Efforts to use such stem cells to help the spine repair itself and restore the function of organs and limbs have yet to produce an approved treatment in humans.
"The model animals underwent a rapid rehabilitation process, at the end of which they could walk quite well," explained Tal Dvir, who led the team at the Sagol Center for Regenerative Biotechnology.
"This is the first instance in the world in which implanted engineered human tissues have generated recovery in an animal model for long-term chronic paralysis, which is the most relevant model for paralysis treatments in humans.
"There is a long way to prove that it works also in humans, but this is our goal," Dvir, who led the team, which worked with researchers from the university's Shmunis School of Biomedicine and Cancer Research and Biomedical Engineering Department, said.
He said the plan was to create unique spinal cord implants using cells from each patient's body. He said this would "enable regeneration of the damaged tissue with no risk of rejection of the implant."
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
