Paralyzed man able to move again after pioneering therapy

LONDON (KGO) -- A paralyzed man is now able to move again after a pioneering therapy that involved transplanting cells from his nasal cavity into his spinal cord.

Darek Fidyka is now walking with assistance and has feeling in his lower extremities following the breakthrough procedure.

He became paralyzed from the chest down during a knife attack in 2010 in his native Bulgaria.

Doctors in Poland performed the surgery in collaboration with scientists in London.

"You are making history now. To me, this is more impressive than a man walking on the moon," Prof. Geoff Raisman from London's Institute of Neurology said.

Doctors used olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs), which are cells that form part of the sense of smell.

OECs act as pathway cells that enable nerve fibres in the olfactory system to be continually renewed.

In the first two operations, surgeons removed one of the patient's olfactory bulbs and grew the cells in culture. Two weeks later, they transplanted the OECs into the spinal cord, which had been cut through in the knife attack.

They only had about 500,000 cells to work with.

The scientists believe the OECs provided a pathway that allowed fibres above and below the injury to reconnect.

But some experts say the medical evidence is far from conclusive and that it would be wrong to give false hope to people expecting a cure for paralysis.

Experts now plan to treat 10 other patients in a clinical trial to show definitively that the procedure can help to reverse paralysis.