First tests for stem cell therapy are near

Even as supporters of human embryonic stem cell research are reeling from last week’s sudden cutoff of federal funding, another portentous landmark is quietly approaching: the world’s first attempt to carefully test the cells in people.

Scientists are poised to inject cells created from embryonic stem cells into some patients with a progressive form of blindness and others with devastating spinal cord injuries. That’s a welcome step for researchers eager to move from the laboratory to the clinic and for patients hoping for cures. But beyond being loathsome to those with moral objections to any research using cells from human embryos, the tests are worrying many proponents: Some argue that the experiments are premature, others question whether they are ethical, and many fear that the trials risk disaster for the field if anything goes awry. Continue Reading »

Adult stem cell research far ahead of embryonic

NEW YORK — A few months ago, Dr. Thomas Einhorn was treating a patient with a broken ankle that wouldn’t heal, even with multiple surgeries. So he sought help from the man’s own body.

Einhorn drew bone marrow from the man’s pelvic bone with a needle, condensed it to about four teaspoons of rich red liquid, and injected that into his ankle.

Four months later the ankle was healed. Einhorn, chairman of orthopedic surgery at Boston University Medical Center, credits “adult” stem cells in the marrow injection. He tried it because of published research from France. Continue Reading »

Researchers advance spinal cord injury treatments

(PhysOrg.com) — A full recovery from a spinal cord injury? Don’t hold your breath. Actually, according to Gordon Mitchell, a professor of neurosciences at the UW School of Veterinary Medicine, holding your breath might be exactly the right thing to do.

Mitchell and team members from the University of Saskatchewan, The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, and the Emory School of Medicine are researching innovative spinal cord therapies that earned them the Translational Research Partnership Award this year. Continue Reading »

State Budget Puts Spinal Cord Injury Research in Jeopardy

State trooper Paul Richter was lying on the ground, looking up at the man who had just shot him. Death seemed all but certain. The Queens-born Richter had been shot in the leg, arm and neck while checking out a vehicle that had been used in the robbery of a sporting goods store, and the shooter seemed ready to finish him off.

“Nah, he’s dead,” the shooter’s accomplice said, giving Richter a reprieve. But the 1973 encounter in Lake Placid left Richter paralyzed for months. Eventually he was able to regain some function of his legs and can walk with the assistance of a cane. Continue Reading »

Research network for spinal cord injury beginning clinical trial

Many treatments to limit or reverse the devastating results of spinal cord injury have shown promise in the laboratory yet have never been brought to clinical trials because of the formidable infrastructure required to test and approve them for human use.

A unique partnership between the military and the Christopher Reeve Foundation is addressing this challenge.

The U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command’s Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center is supporting the development of the foundation’s North American Clinical Trials Network, which has created the largest SCI active clinical trial database in the United States and will begin its first trial in early 2010. Continue Reading »

Getting a kick out of research

A Dalhousie University professor and an international team of researchers have discovered what makes us kick.

Dr. Rob Brownstone, along with colleagues in New York and Scotland, discovered a group of nerve cells that are critical to regulating how much force muscles use when performing movements. Continue Reading »

Lessons we learn from review of urological procedures performed during three decades in a spinal cord injury patient: a case report

Background We review urological procedures performed on a spinal cord injury patient during three decades.Case presentation A 23-year-old male patient sustained T-12 paraplegia in 1971. In 1972, intravenous urography showed both kidneys functioning well; division of external urethral sphincter was performed. Continue Reading »

Transplantation Technique Feasible for Spinal Cord Injury

(HealthDay News) — In the treatment of spinal cord injury, transplantation of readily available mono-nuclear bone marrow cells may be an alternative to the use of bone marrow stromal cells, according to an animal study published in the Nov. 15 issue of Spine. Continue Reading »

Salamanders – What Can They Teach us About Spinal Cord Injury?

(HealthNewsDigest.com) – GAINESVILLE, Fla. — For more than 400 years, scientists have studied the amazing regenerative power of salamanders, trying to understand how these creatures routinely repair injuries that would usually leave humans and other mammals paralyzed — or worse.

Now, fueled by a highly competitive National Institutes of Health Grand Opportunity grant of $2.4 million, a multi-institutional team of researchers associated with the University of Florida McKnight Brain Institute’s Regeneration Project has begun creating genomic tools necessary to compare the extraordinary regenerative capacity of the Mexican axolotl salamander with established mouse models of human disease and injury. Continue Reading »

New approach to prevent spinal cord damage

Washington, Nov 8(ANI): Scientists from Weill Cornell Medical College have suggested a new approach to prevent paralysis following a spinal cord injury.

They believe that permanent nerve damage may be avoided by raising levels of a compound that converts to nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) – the active form of vitamin B3.

The compound would potentially be administered immediately following spinal cord injury. Continue Reading »