A 38-year-old man who was paralysed from the chest down following a knife attack can now walk using a frame, following a pioneering cell transplantation treatment by surgeons in Poland.

The technique involved using specialist cells from the nose, called olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs), in the spinal cord. These allow the nerve cells that give us a sense of smell to grow back when they are damaged.

The patient, Darek Fidyka, was paralysed after suffering stab wounds to the back in 2010, leaving an 8mm gap in his spinal cord.

He described the ability to walk again using a frame as “an incredible feeling, saying “when you can’t feel almost half your body, you are helpless, but when it starts coming back it’s as if you were born again.”

“It’s amazing to see how regeneration of the spinal cord, something that was thought impossible for many years, is becoming a reality,” said Dr Pawel Tabakow, consultant neurosurgeon at Wroclaw University Hospital, Poland.

Professor Geoff Raisman, Chair of Neural Regeneration at the University College London (UCL) Institute of Neurology, first discovered OECs in 1985 and successfully showed that they could be used to treat spinal injuries in rats in 1997.

“It is immensely gratifying to see that years of research have now led to the development of a safe technique for transplanting cells into the spinal cord,” said Raisman.

“I believe we have now opened the door to a treatment of spinal cord injury that will get patients out of wheel chairs.

Our goal now is to develop this first procedure to a point where it can be rolled out as a worldwide general approach,” said Raisman.

“Spinal and nerve injury represent a major cause of disability for many patients and effective treatment strategies are lacking,” said Professor Michael Hanna, Director of the Institute of Neurology.The study was published in the journal Cell Transplantation.

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