Sapporo Medical University, Japan, will launch the nation’s first clinical trial for using stem cells to regenerate nerves in people with spinal cord injuries.
The team will collect bone marrow fluid from patients who have sustained spinal cord injuries within the past two weeks, extract mesenchymal stem cells that develop into nerves from the fluid, and cultivate them in large quantities to make a preparation that will be intravenously injected into the patients.
The trial will enrol 30 patients who will be injected with the cells within 54 days of their spinal injury.