On Tuesday, the FDA granted approval for a first-ever human trial of cellular transplant to cure paralysis

Andrew H. Walker / Getty Images for The Buoniconti Fund

Marc Buoniconti attends the 26th Annual Great Sports Legends Dinner to benefit the Buoniconti Fund To Cure Paralysis at The Waldorf-Astoria on September 26, 2011 in New York City.

In the early winter of 1988, I traveled to Miami to visit Marc Buoniconti. He was 24 years old at the time, and in many ways looked quite fit full of energy, chattering on about his plans, exactly what youd expect from a person his age. But Buoniconti wasnt fit. He was in a wheelchair and hadnt moved a muscle below his shoulders since fracturing his spine between the 3rd and 4th cervical vertebrae in a college football game in October 1985.

By the time I met him, he had already done the grueling work of weaning himself from his respirator training new muscles and learning new techniques to breathe on his own. And that freedom allowed him to assume the job of point man for The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, an organization co-founded by Buoniconti, his father NFL Hall of Famer Nick Buoniconti the University of Miami and a handful of local surgeons.

I was never in denial about my injury, Marc Buoniconti told me at the time. When you cant move, you move through that phase pretty fast. But the absence of denial did not mean the absence of hope. Buoniconti was adamant that he would dedicate his life to getting out of his chair and helping the 300,000 other Americans living with spinal cord injury do the same. In the meantime, hed keep himself as fit as possible. When the cure comes, he said, I plan to be ready.

Bouniconti is now a 45-year-old-man with a degree in psychology, still with the Miami Project and still in a wheelchair. But the cure he spoke of 27 years ago just got a very big step closer. On Tuesday morning, Miami Project doctors convened a press conference to announce that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had just granted them a green light to begin Phase 1 human trials for a new surgical technique in which nerve cells from the leg would be transplanted to the spine of newly paralyzed patients in the hope that they would grow restoring at least some function and sensation.

I am more optimistic now than I have ever been, says Buoniconti. He has reason to be.

What makes spinal cord injuries as devastating as they are is that everything about them plays out in absolutes: they are instantaneous, utterly disabling and horribly permanent. That last fact has always presented both a puzzle and an opportunity. Nerves in the peripheral nervous system (PNS) those that carry signals in an arm or leg, say are able to regenerate after injury. Thats why you can badly lacerate a finger and retain full use of it. The central nervous system (CNS) is a different matter. An injured spine remains an injured spine, period. Find and harness what it is that makes things so different in the PNS and you just might get a wounded spine to heal.

As researchers learned, there are a lot of things that drive peripheral regrowth, but perhaps the most important are known as Schwann cells, which are not nerve cells themselves, but a kind of attendant, helping neurons regrow myelin the fatty insulation that covers nerve strands and otherwise stay healthy and functioning. For some years, Miami Project scientists have been transplanting Schwann cells from the legs of paralyzed rats, mice, pigs and primates to the site of the spinal injury and have been astonished at the results: in many cases, the animals recovered 70% of the lost sensation and function. That is exactly 70% more than most spinal injured patients have been told to hope for.

Excerpt from:
A Breakthrough for Spinal Cord Injury Research?

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