A single shot of stem cells can be paralyzed by a spinal cord slutel.
Stem cell scientist Hideyuki Okano from Keio University in Japan has just announced that a completely paralyzed man can now stand and learns how to walk again after receiving reprogrammed stem cells.
The patient was one of the four Japanese men who received the injection shortly after devastating injuries left paralyzed.
Another man in the first-in-sort test can now move some of his arm and leg muscles.
Although scientists said that larger clinical examinations will be needed, the early results indicate a chance of 50-50 that stem cells can restore the ability of a paralyzed patient to move again.
Okano noted that the medical study used induced pluripotent tribe (IPS) cells, which in fact means that it is normal adult cells that have been reprogrammed to work as the embryonic stem cells found in unborn babies.
Those stem cells have the power to transform into any form of cell that the body needs, making them incredibly valuable for doctors looking for new ways to treat serious injuries.
More than 15 million people worldwide are currently living with a spinal cord and the majority of these patients are men.
Nerve cells derived from induced pluripotent stem cells have the potential to reverse paralysis and have already helped one patient to walk again
The World Health Organization has said that more than 15 million people all over the world live with an spinal cord slutel
“This is a dramatic recovery,” said Okano about the patient who can stand again. “That person is now training to walk.”
The new report in the Nature magazine showed that all four patients received an injection of two million IPS cells in their respective injuries.
The Okano team hoped that the stem cells would turn themselves into neurons (nerve cells) and glial cells – the cells that hold nerve cells in place so that they can do their work.
Each man was older than 60 and had a spinal clever slut two to four weeks before the stem cell procedure.
The cells were taken from a donor after the program received the full support from the Japanese government in 2019.
Before that, Okano had demonstrated how the reprogrammed cells could be paralyzed in monkeys in monkeys.
After approval for human tests, an ideal patient emerged in December 2021, followed by three other victims of the spinal cord glitch in 2022 and 2023.
The researchers have been following this patient since then, in the hope that the cells would begin to grow the damaged parts of their spinal cord that prevent communication between their brains and limbs.
A complete follow-up showed that there were no side effects for the stem cell injections and half of the group started to show noticeable improvements.
Stem cells can be led to turn into many different cell types, making them a powerful tool for regenerative medicine
Prior to the start of this medical experiment, scientists used other types of stem cells with very mixed results.
James St. John, a translational neuroscientist at Griffith University in Australia, admitted: “Nothing has really worked so far.”
This included the use of cells from the human bone marrow, muscle -forming cells harvested from donors and embryonic stem cells extracted from fetuses.
In the new procedure, scientists take cells from easily accessible areas such as the skin or blood from an adult donor.
Subsequently, researchers use a set of four specific genes that they slide into the harvested cells – turn the clock back and force them to turn into stem cells.
Scientists inject these genes in the cells with the help of carriers such as harmless viruses or mrna – the same tool that doctors use for vaccines.
Nobel Prize winner Shinya Yamanaka was credited for the first time for discovering these genetic switches for reprogramming cells in 2006.
It can take weeks before the adult cells start to lose all these specialized properties and return to stem cells.
As soon as they have all turned into stem cells, doctors can inject them into the areas of the body where there is damage or degeneration.
If successful, the cells will start acting as the missing or damaged cells – which are essentially re -grow that parts of the body – such as a knee -lying, the retina of an eye or an spinal cord.
'That is a great positive result. It is very exciting for the field, “St. John added.
However, St. John warned that there is still a long way to go before this breakthrough becomes a definitive remedy for spinal cord.
St. John, who has performed his own stem cell tests with regard to injuries of the spinal cord, noted that each single injury is different and researchers need to perform more tests to see if IPS cells work for all types of injuries or only certain paralysis cases.
