Neuroscientist and spinal cord researcher Dr. Wise Young  answered this question at the CareCure forum, and reposted his thoughts on his blog dedicated for postings from the forum.

Dr. Young believes there will come a day when a combination of cures will be developed.

“there are many reasons to be optimistic that there will be not just one but many “cures” for spinal cord injury.  I defined a cure as a treatment that would make it so that an observer who did not know you wouldn’t be able to tell that you have spinal cord injury.  I believe that there will be a cure because much data indicate that the spinal cord can regenerate and many therapies restore function in animal studies.  One or more of these will be shown to be successful in people in the coming years, hopefully sooner rather than later.”

Having an administration that is pro-embryonic stem cell research, should also help stimulate new discoveries.

“For nearly 8 years, the Bush Administration has suppressed not only embryonic stem cell (ESC) research but all stem cell research.  Last year, for example, NIH funded only $600 million of stem cell research, i.e. $300 million for animal stem cells, $260 million for human adult stem cells, and $40 million for human ESC.  The total NIH budget was about $30 billion in 2007.  So, even though stem cells are widely acknowledged by scientists to be the most important biomedical advance of the decade, the NIH spent only 2% of its budget on all of stem cell research, only 1% on human stem cells, and less than 0.2% on human ESC research.  The Obama Administration will lift these restrictions and strongly encourage stem cell research.”

Will there be a cure for Spinal Cord Injury?  The solution is getting much closer. We wait for the Geron human trials to begin, which will be the first of their kind for the U.S., and anticipate more to follow.

I was told when I was injured in 1994, that a cure was five years away.  Those optomists were a little off.  Timelines are tough.  I do believe though, I’ll see a cure for sci within ten years.  We’ll see

‘I have been doing spinal cord injury research for 30 years. The first half of my career was spent on developing treatments for acute spinal cord injury and the last half has been on regenerating the spinal cord. When I first started in the field, doctors and scientists were very pessimistic. Most of my time and effort was spent trying to convince them that something can work. The second half has been different. The 1990′s was the decade of the spinal cord. Scientists became convinced that the spinal cord can regenerate. Doctors are not yet convinced but most of them are not in touch with the latest research in the area. However, people in the spinal cord injury community heard about the therapies, particularly stem cell therapies.

In the past decade, since 1997, many clinics, such as those in Mexico, China, Bahamas, Portugal, and India began advertising stem cell therapies for spinal cord injury. They charge about US$20,000-$30,000 for unproven therapy. People flocked to these clinics, often not knowing what they are getting. These places do not publish their work. Some do not even bother to get followup studies on the patients. Many have invented some kind of repeat procedure in order to get the patients to come back to the hospital and so that they can charge more for the therapies. When asked to provide details about the treatment, these places are reluctant to provide the information. These are pathognomonic signs of a scam.

In the meantime, many legitimate and scientifically based therapies are being developed by scientists. Dozens of therapies have been shown to regenerate the spinal cord in rats. Some of these therapies were beginning to go into clinical trial in the late 1990′s. The attack on 9/11/2001 unfortuantely diverted the attention of the United States. Since 2001, funding sources for spinal cord injury clinical trials dried up in the United States. Industry was not willing to invest because they thought that spinal cord injury is a small market. Christopher Reeve did a great job building up the private fund-raising for spinal cord injury research but his untimely death left us with very big shoes to fill. The main source of spinal cord injury funding is the NIH and they have been cutting back funding of research, for example NIH spinal cord injury research funding declined from $84 million in 2005 to $64 million in 2006.

Instead of joining forces and pressing our government and industry to invest in spinal cord injury clinical trials, many people in the spinal cord injury simply gave up. Some decided to go overseas for their therapies. You have read about many of those on these forums. However, some decided to lobby for research. In 2005, several hundred people went to the first rally in Washington DC to press Congress to fund the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Act. We have subsequently gone two more times but I want to point out that this was really the first major effort by the spinal cord injury community to push for spinal cord injury research funding by the government. While there have been many successful efforts lobbying the govenrment for ADA, rehabilitation, veteran administration, and home care issues, lobbying for spinal cord injury research and particularly clinical trials is a relatively new phenomenon.

Many, like yourself, blamed the problem on the FDA. In my opinion, the FDA is not the culprit. They apply the same standards to spinal cord injury therapies as to all other diseases, including AIDS, MS, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, depression, etc. The FDA sets tough safety and efficacy standards but this is what the American public wants. Do you remember the COX-2 inhibitor Vioxx scandal. This was one of the best drugs for arthritis and joint pain. Then, it turned out that people who received prolonged (many months) high-dose Vioxx had a slightly higher risk of strokes and heart attacks. There was enormous public pressure on the FDA to force Merck to withdraw Vioxx. Merck voluntarily withdrew the drug.

The American public wants to eat their cake and have it, too. There is no such thing as complete safety and miraculous efficacy, and yet people seem to expect complete safety and miraculous efficacy at the same time. During the AIDS crisis, the FDA tried to come up with some compromises to the long bench-to-bedside gap. They invented a category of approval called “compassionate use” for situations where there are no other effective therapies. Spinal cord injury would fall under this category if any company or doctor ever wanted to get more rapid approval of a therapy. For example, the alternating current electrical stimulation device tested in Purdue was just approved on a compassionate use basis after a phase 1 trial. So, there are ways to move therapies faster through the bureaucracy. The problem is that very few clinical trials are going on in the United States. The government is not funding clinical trials. The industry is not funding clinical trials. Foundations are not
funding clinical trials. Is it any wonder that we don’t have few spinal cord injury clinical trials in the United States? The solution is to get clinical trials going in the United States.

What does it take to get clinical trials going in the United States? First, we must convince the government to fund clinical trial networks. Such networks reduce the cost of clinical trials and encourage industry to invest in spinal cord injury trials. Note that the government has long funded clinical trial networks for many conditions, including cancer, multiple sclerosis, and even for traumatic brain injury. It has never funded a spinal cord injury clinical trial network. The Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Act is asking for modest funding for such a network. Second, the community has to help recruit and educate the doctors. Wait, you say… how come that is the responsibility of the community? It is because nobody will do it for you. Doctors are always behind on the latest research. After leaving medical school, they just don’t have the time to keep up with the latest research. It is up to the community to recruit them and teach them. Third, people need to help fundra
ise for spinal cord injury research. Most people don’t realize how much their neighbors, friends, relatives, and many people they don’t know care about curing spinal cord injury. It is a shame that we can’t raise more than $15 million per year for spinal cord injury research in the United States. We should be able to raise $250 million per year. That would go a long ways towards cure.

You are probably thinking that all this will take a long time and how will it help you. I agree. It will take time. But, if we keep postponing getting the cure movement started, it will never happen. I believe that we would have had the cure by now, if the spinal cord injury cure movement had really gotten underway twenty years ago. There were people at that time who tried, i.e. the American Paralysis Association. However, they were never able to attract more than a small fraction of the spinal cord injury community. I have heard every excuse why the cure movement has not yet happened. These excuses range from we are too small (AIDS movement was way smaller than we are when they started) to nobody cares and there is no money (these are simply not true). But, in reality, we don’t have the cure today because the spinal cord injury community has never truly believed that there would be a cure, never took the time to understand the science behind the cure, and kept on thinking th
at somebody else would do it for them.

I started Spinewire in 1997 (the precursor to CareCure) in order to provide information to the spinal cord injury community about themselves and their condition, so that they can advocate effectively for the cure. I believe that the community must lead this effort. The community must understand what is necessary to make the cure happen. No cure has ever occurred without the community. The polio vaccine occurred with the support of the March of Dimes and FDR. Note that the community were parents of children frightened of polio, not the people with polio. So, although the vaccine prevented polio, it unfortunately did nothing for the millions of people who were disabled by polio. The world trumpeted the cure of polio and all those people disabled from polio were forgotten. Some of the strong anti-cure sentiments in today’s disability community still emanate from memory of that abandonment. If you take the time to read the disability literature leading up to the ADA, you will see
how anti-cure people were. Many people in disability don’t want cure. They want societal support of people with disability.

Some of us have been working hard on ways to start small cure efforts around the world until the United States gets its act together. So, for example, I have spent the past three years organizing the ChinaSCINet which hopefully will be able to test combination therapies for spinal cord injury rigorously and efficiently. I believe that there will be clinical trials involving stem cells in California and New Jersey (as well as other states) by 2008. These state-funded approaches are necessary because the federal government has just dropped the ball. Finally, a number of companies are beginning to understand that spinal cord injury may be the gateway to the central nervous system and that if they can get their regenerative drug approved for spinal cord, it will be easier to get that drug approved for brain injury and stroke. Several large and deep-pocketed drug companies, including Pfizer, Novartis, Johnson & Johnson, Boston Life Science, and Biogen are beginning to invest in cl
inical trials. Several small companies, such as Acorda Therapeutics, Geron, and others are planning or doing clinical trials.

What can you do now? I recommend the following:
1. Take the time to understand spinal cord injury and the various treatments. I am here to answer questions and there are many people here with a great deal of experience. You need to understand things well-enough to make rationale decisions concerning clinical trials that will be coming.
2. Participate in lobbying your government to fund more spinal cord injury research and clinical trials. This can be in the form of letters or telephone calls. It is a long-term effort but it has to start.
3. You must prepare your body for clinical trial. This includes rebuilding your bone and muscle, getting your cardiovascular system up, and weaning down on any unnecessary drugs that you are taking. This will increase the probability that you will respond to whatever therapy.
4. Become educated and earn money. You probably think that I am kidding. I am not. Many studies have shown that the highest correlation with recovery from spinal cord injury is education and wealth.

I hope that the above helps.

Wise.’

‘Researchers at Barrow and ASU will use the grant to develop new hydrogels (liquids that gel) to stimulate the ends of damaged fiber on the spinal cord to grow and bypass the injured or scarred area of the spinal cord.’

The study uses the latest technology from the field of bioengineering. These grants should help researchers gain valuable insight on these research techniques, and bring the cure for spinal cord injury one step closer.