White House stem cell shift expected

A major shift in White House policy on stem cell research is expected when Barack Obama takes office.

The president-elect has been a strong supporter of embryonic stem cell research.

He is widely expected to lift restrictions imposed by President Bush in August 2001 who was opposed to the destruction of embryos for scientific research.

This limited federal funding to stem cell lines created before that date. Continue Reading »

Loyal friend pursues research

GORDON PARK: The sight of seeing a mate restricted to a wheelchair drove Gordon Park’s Tim O’Shea to inspiring heights.

Devastated when his rugby union team mate Ben Harvey was diagnosed a quadriplegic after a match day mishap, O’Shea pursued a QUT biomedical engineering degree, opening the door for him to study spinal cord repair research.

O’Shea has now been awarded with a $150,000 General Sir John Monash Award for postgraduate study at an overseas university for three years. Continue Reading »

Directing Objects With Your Mind

Imagine being able to look at a light, think about turning it on, and it comes on without you moving. Or picture, with just a thoughtful wish, being able to control a computer or open a door. Now envision directing and controlling all manner of inanimate objects with your mind. It would be great fun and potentially very helpful in our multi-tasking world, but consider how it would transform the existence for a person who has lost all motor function due to spinal cord or brain damage. What if there were a technology that allowed people with severe disabilities to communicate, guide robotic limbs, and control the environment around them? This is not just science fiction, but the vision driving the development of brain-computer interfaces or BCI. Continue Reading »

Quest to discard wheelchair leads Lexington man, wife to Mexico

On a Sunday in August, Mike Phillips’ world came tumbling to the ground. While on a walk at Riverside Park near his Lexington home, Phillips climbed a tree, not an unusual occurrence for the agile 32-year-old.

“I’ve climbed a bunch of trees in the park,” he said. “It started pouring down rain, and I came down a little too fast and slipped.”

He fell 40 feet and broke his back, severely damaging his spinal cord. He is now paralyzed from the chest down. Continue Reading »

A New Hope for Life – Stem Cells

Ever imagined, what it would be like to lead a disease free life and be a part of a world where every body is hale and hearty? Well, it may sound utopian right now but with researches on stem cells on full swing, a few years down the line, it is a definite possibility.

On Oct. 16, 2006, Carron Morrow, from Alabama was successfully cured through a pioneering study in which stem cells were used to regenerate her failing heart. Not long after the surgery, Morrow began to feel like the same old energetic person. “I knew within two months something was going on,” Morrow said. “I could sing a whole song at church.” She soon got back to her job, and subsequent tests confirmed that her heart was functioning normally once again. Continue Reading »

Signatures for Spinal Cord Research

Global Petition in support of Spinal Cord Research

The launch of a global petition in support of spinal cord research took place yesterday. Signatures for Spinal Cord Research is a compelling appeal to all spinal cord injured, their families, friends and the public to come together under one petition to urge funding and support for research that will deliver a cure for paralysis. 2.5 million people worldwide are victims of traumatic spinal cord injuries, with well over an additional 130,000 new cases occurring every year. Continue Reading »

Nose for a cure: Could the key to helping spine injury victims walk be right in front of your eyes?

Stem cells taken from the nose could help spinal injury victims regain movement, new research suggests.

Tests on paralysed rats showed they were able to move their hind legs just six weeks after being injected with human nose cells.

Scientists at the University of New South Wales, Australia, where the research is being carried out, hope the results will eventually lead to a successful clinical trial on humans. Continue Reading »

A spine-tingling new frontier

One Sydney scientist likens it to the lunar mission; a potentially great but risky step forward. For some people with spinal cord injury – 15,000 in Australia, increasing by one a day – there finally appears cautious hope that feeling or even movement in paralysed limbs might one day be restored, even if no one is quite prepared to say exactly if it will be in this generation of patients or the next.

American health authorities may soon approve the world’s first trials of a human embryonic stem cell-derived product for spinal cord injury, GRNOPC1, after the California pharmaceutical company Geron handed 22,500 pages to the US Food and Drug Administration to justify GRNOPC1′s testing in human patients, perhaps within two weeks of injury. Continue Reading »

Transplanted fat cells restore function after spinal cord injury

Fat cells treat spinal cord injury

Tampa, Fla. (Dec. 10, 2008) – A study published in the current issue of CELL TRANSPLANTATION (Vol.17, No. 8) suggests that mature adipocytes – fat cells – could become a source for cell replacement therapy to treat central nervous system disorders.

According to the study’s lead researcher, Dr. Yuki Ohta of the Institute of Medical Science, St. Mariana University School of Medicine, Kawasaki, Japan, adipose-derived stem/stromal cells have in the past been shown to differentiate into neuronal cells in an in vitro setting. Continue Reading »

Collaboration Between Burnham And HeadNorth

HeadNorth Foundation has pledged $975,000 to Burnham Institute for Medical Research (Burnham) to support cutting-edge stem cell research. The funding, part of HeadNorth’s Chronic Spinal Cord Injury Project, will support efforts by Dr. Evan Snyder, Stem Cell Program Director at Burnham and Dr. Mark Tuszynski, Director, Center for Neural Repair at the University of California, San Diego, to use stem cells to treat chronic spinal cord injuries.

“One of the main hopes of the spinal cord injury community is that the future holds a cure for paralysis,” said Randal Schober, HeadNorth’s executive director. “We at HeadNorth believe that stem cells may hold the key to bringing that hope to fruition.” Continue Reading »