Scientists at Tel Aviv University made paralyzed mice walk again with spinal cord implants and say they are less than three years away from doing the same with humans.
“If this works in humans, and we believe that it will, it can offer all paralyzed people hope that they may walk again,” Professor Tal Dvir, head of the research team that made the breakthrough, told the Times of Israel.
The experiment, conducted on Feb. 7, involved spinal cord tissue engineered from human cells, then implanted into 15 mice experiencing long-term paralysis. 12 of the mice then began walking without issue. An unspecified number of mice with short-term paralysis were given the implants, all of which showed no signs of paralysis following the experiment.
This experiment marks the first time growing new spinal tissue and surgically implanting it has been successfully implemented at the trial stage. Previous experiments with similar goals have used stem cell injections rather than implants.
“We’ve been using human implants on the mice, not mice implants, which means we’re not going back to the beginning of research to move over to humans,” Dvir said. While the spinal cord tissue implanted in the mice was engineered from the abdominal fat cells of three human donors, Dvir intends to engineer spinal tissue from patients’ cells.
“We separate the fat cells from other materials such as collagen and sugars and reprogram the cells using genetic engineering methods, so they can ‘become’ any cell in the body,” Dvir explained.
Dvir believes the procedure has broader implications beyond spinal reconstruction, with the team hoping to explore possibilities for Parkinson’s disease, brain trauma, and age-related vision loss.
Dvir said discussions regarding clinical trials have begun with America’s Food and Drug Administration, hopefully within the next three years. A company called Matricelf has been founded to continue researching and honing the procedure.