A man named Darek Fidyka had been paralysed for almost two years and was told he would never walk again. But Recently he has recovered sensation and movement in his legs after receiving a revolutionary cell transplant.
The transplant was a world-first collaboration effort by surgeons at the Wroclaw University Hospital in Poland and scientists at University College London’s Institute of Neurology in the UK, and the findings are published in the journal Cell Transplantation.
The cells that were used to achieve this miracle were taken from Fidyka's olfactory bulb, the structure that gives us our sense of smell. These nerve cells are continually damaged due to the different odours we smell and must be replaced regularly, which means the olfactory bulb is a very rich source of olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs) - specialist cells that form part of the sense of smell.OECs provide the pathway for the damaged fibres in our nose to grow back, enabling nerve cells to regenerate themselves throughout our lifetime.
The technique involved first removing one of Fidyka's olfactory bulbs, and culturing it in the laboratory to generate about 500,000 OECs. The OECs were then transplanted into the damaged area in his spinal cord. His incredible recovery suggests that the OECs provided a pathway for the fibres around the injury to rejoin, by creating a “nerve bridge” between the damaged ends of the spinal cord. This regeneration reopened communication pathways between his brain controlling muscles and his lower body.
The researcher team believes as this procedure is further developed, will result in a historic change in the currently hopeless outlook for people disabled by spinal cord injury.
