The procedure involves removing a couple of thousand adult stem cells from Cole’s bone marrow, multiplying them in the lab and injecting them into his spinal cord. That should happen later this month. Nine other patients have also been enrolled for this phase of the trial, which is being undertaken by TCA Cellular Therapy in Covington, La.
Adult stem cell treatments have enjoyed success in treating leukemia, lymphoma, various blood diseases, and cardiovascular ailments (among other things), and researchers expect experimental new spinal cord treatments to repair damaged neurons to the point that at minimum patients regain some motor and sensory function that was lacking before. But the impact of the treatment could be much greater, if not in Cole’s case then for future recipients for the treatment.
The ultimate goal, of course, is to find a means to restore nervous function to the 311,000 people living with a spinal cord injury in the U.S. alone. Many of those people suffer from injuries or ailments for which treatment options aren’t just limited — they are virtually non-existent.
By Clay Dillow