Seven early-stage life sciences companies, working in areas ranging from cancer drugs to treatments for spinal cord injuries to tests for genetic disorders, were awarded a total of $3.4 million in loans yesterday under the state’s $1 billion life sciences initiative.

The so-called Accelerator loans were approved by the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, a quasi-public agency charged with implementing the state’s life sciences program. The center received 88 applications for the loans. Continue Reading »

Stillman Valley senior Barry Glaudel tosses a football with his father almost every day.

It’s not for practice. It’s for healing.

And it’s not on a field or in the backyard. It’s at the Van Matre Rehabilitation Center on Mulford Road.

“You don’t have to whip it at me, geez,” Barry said jokingly to his father, Barry Glaudel Sr., during a rehabilitation exercise last week. Young Barry, a lefty, threw the football back harder to his dad with a grin. Continue Reading »

REGINA — With May 2009 proclaimed as spinal cord injury and physical disabilities awareness month in the province, the Canadian Paraplegic Association (CPA) wants to spotlight everything its members can do.

“It’s the abilities of people with disabilities — don’t focus on the disability, focus on the ability,” said CPA Saskatchewan President Del Huber. “We’re trying to just make people aware of … not so much of what they can’t do, as what they can do.” Continue Reading »

The message on the marquee at the entrance to the James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital goes to the heart of the sacrifice made by the men and women receiving treatment at the facility.

It reads: “The Price Of Freedom Is Visible Here.”

“Yes it is,” said hospital director Stephen Lucas.

Nowhere on the hospital’s campus is that more apparent than inside the spinal cord injury center. Continue Reading »

Police should receive specialized training to recognize when someone has suffered a potential spinal cord injury, a judge has recommended.

The recommendation by provincial court Judge Ted Lismer was one of 10 included in an inquest report released yesterday into the death of Alan Earle (Sonny) Rupert.

Rupert, 47, died at Health Sciences Centre on Feb. 13, 2005, eight months after fracturing his spine while being escorted out of a Magnus Avenue rooming house following a domestic dispute. Continue Reading »

Researchers in the Department of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Cambridge have started a clinical trial of a new treatment for dogs with severe spinal cord injuries. In 2005 Nick Jeffery and Nicolas Granger demonstrated that olfactory ensheathing cell transplantation was reliable and safe in dogs with spinal cord injury. These cells, which are only found in the smell system of the nose and brain, are able to form a bridge across the damaged spinal cord, and therefore help to provide improvements in walking and continence after injury. Continue Reading »

Suffering a broken neck and severe spinal cord injury, David Sparby is determined to regain the use of his legs

David Sparby has been a quadriplegic since Jan. 21, 2006, the day an 800-pound square hay bale fell from a height of 10 feet, breaking his neck and causing a contusion in his spinal cord. “You could feel all of a sudden everything was trickling out of your body, then there was nothing,” David said. He initially was taken by ambulance to Northwest Medical Center in Thief River Falls, then transported to Altru Health System in Grand Forks where he received surgery to fuse the injured vertebrae. Continue Reading »

Batches of human embryonic stem cells that hold the promise of treating spinal-cord injuries are being grown inside a Peninsula laboratory — ready, and now federally approved, for injection into paralyzed patients.

In the worldwide race to develop stem cell therapies, biotech giant Geron Corp. in Menlo Park will be the first to begin a human clinical trial using the controversial stem cells, which are created through repeated divisions of a human embryo. Continue Reading »

People with brain or spinal cord injuries in Alberta are testing new technologies designed to improve their lives by restoring movement.

Scientists, biomedical engineers, physicians and nurses from Edmonton and Calgary who are working to make paralyzed muscles move will receive $5 million over the next five years from the Alberta Heritage Foundation and the province.

On Monday, Darryl Steeles, who has multiple sclerosis, used a device that works with a leg brace to help him to walk. Electrodes in the device kick his nervous system back into high gear after nine years of destruction from the disease. Continue Reading »

A new study released Tuesday shows roughly one in 50 Americans has some degree of paralysis, which is five times more people than doctors thought are living with a spinal-cord injury, nearly 1.3 million.

It’s a largely hidden population that neither the government nor medical organizations had ever attempted to fully count, and the findings promise to help health authorities understand the scope of need. Continue Reading »