Spinal Injury Cures: Balancing Hope And Expectation

Reports of paralysed animals walking again can give unrealistic hopes to people with spinal injuries. What is more important is that they develop the skills and perspective to get on with their lives

A recent breakthrough in regenerative medicine saw paraplegic dogs regaining some function in their back legs: inevitably, the headlines talked of hope for human patients with spinal cord injury.

But the head of clinical psychology at the National Spinal Injuries Centre, Professor Paul Kennedy, argues that this kind of “magic bullet” reporting can be damaging to people who are coming to terms with a life-changing injury. Continue Reading »

Acorda Acquires Medtronic Drug, Fills Out Mid-Stage Neurology Pipeline

Today Hawthorne, NY-based Acorda Therapeutics (NASDAQ: ACOR) announced that it licensed an experimental compound to treat spinal cord injury from medical-device giant Medtronic (NYSE: MDT). Acorda paid $3 million up front for worldwide rights to the compound, and pledged up to $32 million in regulatory and development milestone payments to Medtronic, which is based in Minneapolis. Medtronic will also receive a “single digit” percentage royalty if the product is commercialized, Acorda says. Continue Reading »

Extensive Natural Recovery Seen After Spinal Cord Injury

Newswise — A study led by researchers in the Department of Neurosciences at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine shows unexpected and extensive natural recovery after spinal cord injury in primates. The findings, to be published November 14 in the advance online edition of Nature Neuroscience, may one day lead to the development of new treatments for patients with spinal cord injuries.

While regeneration after severe brain and spinal cord injury is limited, milder injuries are often followed by good functional recovery. Continue Reading »

Just the beginning: Embryonic stem cells used on first patient

For the first time, surgeons have injected a spinal cord injury patient with human embryonic stem cells in a federally approved experiment, a biomedical firm said Oct. 11.

Food and Drug Administration officials approved the start of the privately funded safety trial in July, allowing a long-awaited test of the cells, which were grown from a single embryo to resemble forerunners to spinal cells. The unnamed patient received the cells at the Shepherd Center, an Atlanta hospital specializing in brain, spine and related ailments. Continue Reading »

Promise of stem cells fulfilled

clinical trial in Atlanta, Georgia, is proof that informed public debate is the key to medical advance

IF I’m honest, my first reaction to recent reports that the first human embryonic stem cell trial had begun on spinal patients in Atlanta was one of nonchalance.

Not because of its potential significance to those of us with spinal injuries — desperate for any news of progress — but because of the stop-start nature of the trial, plagued as it has been by legislative and regulatory restraints. Continue Reading »

Human trial to use stem cells to treat spinal cord injury

A patient paralysed through spinal cord injury has become the first person to receive human embryonic stem (ES) cell treatment in a clinical trial being conducted in the United States. The anonymous patient was injected with stem cells at the site of injury in the hope that the cells will repair the damaged nerve tissue to restore some movement. Continue Reading »

Appeals court grants stay in stem cell case

The federal government will be allowed to keep funding stem cell research — for now.

An Aug. 23 ruling by a U.S. District Court judge barred federal funding of such research until an appeals court granted a stay Thursday that will allow the government to provide money until the case is heard before a federal appeals court, a process that could take several months.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth cited the Dickey-Webber amendment, a federal law that prohibits the use of federal funding for any research in which human embryos may be destroyed.

National Institutes of Health Director Francis S. Collins said in a statement after the initial ruling that the freezing of federal funding greatly threatens current research. Continue Reading »

New Research Demonstrates Safety of Cord-blood-derived Stem Cell Treatments

Beike Biotechnology and Medistem, Inc. Report on 114 Patients Treated With Novel Cord Blood Stem Cell Protocol; New Approach Opens Door to Expanded Uses of Cord Blood Stem Cells

SHENZHEN, China, Sept. 2 /PRNewswire-Asia/ — In a new peer-reviewed article published by the Journal of Translational Medicine, scientists from Beike Biotechnology ( http://www.beikebiotech.com/ ), China’s leading stem cell research and regenerative medicine company, and Medistem, Inc. (Pink Sheets: MEDS; http://www.medisteminc.com ), reported positive safety data in 114 patients who were treated by doctors at Nanshan Affiliated Hospital of Guangdong Medical College (Shenzhen Nanshan Hospital) in Shenzhen using Beike’s proprietary cord blood stem cell transplantation protocol. Continue Reading »

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 »

Department of Defense Gives $5.4 Million to Spinal Cord Injury Research

HOUSTON, Aug. 17 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The United States Department of Defense (DoD) awarded the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation a $5.4 million grant to support the expansion of translational research to find treatments for military men and women with spinal cord injuries.

The DoD gave the two-year, peer-reviewed grant to the Foundation’s North American Clinical Trials Network (NACTN), an international network of hospitals led by Dr. Robert G. Grossman, chairman of neurosurgery at the Methodist Neurological Institute in Houston. Continue Reading »