Imagine your car swerving out of control and and finding yourself in a hospital paralyzed from the neck down. This is, in fact, the entire story of Kristopher Boesen, who suffered a turning point in time where his car fishtailed abruptly over a wet street surface, crushing into a tree and lamp fixture post. Kris’s parents were told by the doctors that he may never have the ability to regain motor control again.
The Procedure
Kris was given the chance to go through a potentially transformative procedure including stem cells, which provides the possibility to repair the damaged tissue by replacing of injured skin cells’ (1). Although, the experimental process provides no guarantee of any recovery to Kris’s paralysis, but to him, the chance was worth taking.
The procedure began at the begging of April where Dr. Liu injected 10 million AST-OPC1 cells right into Kris’ cervical spinal-cord. Dr. Liu notice that; ““Typically, spinal cord injury patients undergo surgery that stabilizes the spine but does very little to restore motor or sensory function. With this study, we are testing procedure that may improve neurological function, which could mean the difference between being permanently paralyzed and being able to use one’s arms and hands. Restoring that level of function could significantly improve the daily lives of patients with severe spinal injuries.”
The Results
After only 3 weeks of his treatment, Kris started showing symptoms of improvement, and within 2 calendar months he could use his telephone by himself, to feed himself, write his name and operate a wheelchair. He previously regained significant improvement in his motor unit functions; which will be the transmissions of emails from the mind to muscles to create movement.
Kris managed to gain significant improvement in his motor function, up to two vertebral chord levels which made a great difference in his movements abilities, such as using your hands to brush your teeth, operate a computer and doing things you couldn’t be able to do in a different situation. Kris regained the remarkably crucial requirement of independence.
After experiencing the full total results of stem cell remedy, Kris was bowled over, stating; “All I’ve sought right from the start was a struggling chance…But if there’s a chance for me personally to walk again, heck yeah then! I wish to do anything possible to achieve that.”
The Future
Even though, doctors are not able to confirm that Kris’s condition will further improve, they will still continue experimenting with stem cell research, in order to increase the chances of it working completely on paralysis.
Heretofore, they have made huge steps forward and they will strive toward resolving paralysis preferably, by teaming up with ‘associate faculty located in departments across KSOM and the College or university to review stem cell-driven new drugs’, Dr. Liu and his team at USC are identified to keep exploring stem cells plus much more!
Stem cell research is still in progress and can be put to use in many other ways apart from paralysis; from Parkinson’s and diabetes to tumors .
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