Lions Partnership

The march to cure spinal cord injury to get people with paralysis walking again continues. Research on adult stem cells by Lions Spinal Cord Fellowships has produced promising signs of recovery in laboratory experiments.

 

The original concept of the partnership was to give Australian scientists, particularly young ones starting out in their career, the opportunity to study at centers of excellence overseas and work towards a cure for spinal cord injury.

 

It soon became apparent that we had high class international experts here in this country; it was just that they were not specifically working on this aspect of the spinal cord. Two experts in stem cell culture at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Institute in Melbourne were nominated by the Spinal Cord Society of Australia's scientific committee to expand their work on spinal cord research.

 

These experts, Professor Paul Simmons and Dr David Haylock, were awarded the inaugural Lions Spinal Cord Fellowships in 2002. The projects they supervised have now been completed. The most important outcome from this research is that cells taken from bone marrow can treat chronic spinal injury as effectively as they treat acute spinal cord injury (in the first six weeks after injury).

 

A third fellowship is planned to help continue the work of Dr Giles Plant at the Red Spinal Research Laboratory, University of WA in Perth. Dr Plant has been using the cells grown in the Melbourne fellowship projects in his laboratory experiments. He and his senior research assistant, Dr Stuart Hodgetts, have been working on the treatment of rats with spinal cord injury.

 

The research world is preparing for a treatment protocol to be applied to human spinal cord paralysis. The countdown is on for these important national projects for scientists, the community, the Spinal Cord Society of Australia and for Lions.