A Bulgarian man who was paralyzed from the chest down in a knife attack can now walk with the aid of a frame after receiving pioneering transplant treatment using cells from his nose.
The technique, described as a breakthrough by a study in the journal Cell Transplantation, involved transplanting what are known as olfactory ensheathing cells into the patient’s spinal cord and constructing a “nerve bridge” between two stumps of the damaged spinal column.
“We believe... this procedure is the breakthrough which, as it is further developed, will result in a historic change in the currently hopeless outlook for people disabled by spinal cord injury,” said Geoffrey Raisman, a professor at University College London’s (UCL) institute of neurology, who led the research.
The 38-year-old patient, Darek Fidyka, was paralyzed after being stabbed in his back in 2010. Following 19 months of treatment, he has recovered some voluntary movement and some sensation in his legs, his medics said.
The Nicholls Spinal Injury Foundation, a UK-based charity which partly funded the research, said in statement that Fidyka was continuing to improve more than predicted, and is now able to drive and live more independently.
Raisman, a UCL spinal injury specialist, worked with surgeons at Wroclaw University Hospital in Poland to remove one of Fidyka’s olfactory bulbs — which give people their sense of smell — and transplant his olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs) and olfactory nerve fibroblasts (ONFs) into the damaged area.
They used a nerve bridge built between the two stumps of the damaged spinal column, they said in the study.
OECs are a type of cell found in both the peripheral and central nervous system. Together with ONFs, they make bundles of nerve fibers that run from the nasal mucosa to the olfactory bulb, where the sense of smell is located.
When the nerve fibers that carry smell become damaged, they are replaced by new nerve fibers which re-enter the olfactory bulbs, the researchers said in their study.
OECs help this process by reopening the surface of the bulbs for the new nerve fibers to enter — leading Raisman and his team to believe that transplanting OECs into the damaged spinal cord could let severed nerve fibers regrow.
Raisman added that the technique of bridging the spinal cord with nerve grafts from the patient had been used in animal studies for years, but never before in combination with OECs.
“The OECs and the ONFs appeared to work together, but the mechanism between their interaction is still unclear,” he said in a statement about the work.
Experts not directly involved in the work said its results offered some new hope, but said more work needed to be done to figure out what had led to this success, and that more patients needed to be treated before the potential of the process could be properly assessed.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of