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Stem Cell News Temperance teen recovers in Portugal

January 10, 2005

BY PATRICIA ANSTETT
FREE PRESS MEDICAL WRITER

LISBON, Portugal -- A tissue sample no bigger than the tip of her baby finger, taken from high inside Cortney Hoffman's nose, holds hope of her recovery from a paralyzing spinal cord injury. The specimen contained more than 2 million adult stem cells, some of the near-magical components of the human body because of their ability to take on tasks of other cells where they are transplanted.

Place them in the heart and they help perform blood-pumping functions.

Put them in a damaged spinal cord like doctors did to Cortney on Saturday and they are believed to take on the Herculean job of sending electrical signals to the brain and back to trigger and to move damaged muscles.

Inserted into the injury site in Cortney's spinal cord by neurosurgeon Dr. Pratas Vital, the cells become the body's molecular jewelry. They even look like small, uncultured pearls, one powerful clump nestled next to each other.

"They look brand new," said Dr. Carlos Lima, chief of the spinal cord autograft team at Lisbon's Hospital de Egas Moniz.

Most important, the cells need to act brand new, creating new nerve cells, neural connections and blood vessels so Cortney, 18, of Temperance can regain some of the sensation and movement she lost two years ago in an auto accident.

Her wish is to walk again. But it will take at least two years of exhaustive rehabilitation to find out just how much recovery she might get from taking a chance on experimental surgery.

Most medical leaders in the field are taking a wait-and-see approach until more results are published. But that hasn't deterred hundreds of people with spinal cord injuries, now booked for the surgery through the end of May.

Cortney's five-hour surgery Saturday was the 37th performed by the team.


Contact PATRICIA ANSTETT at [e-mail].

http://www.freep.com/news/health/stemcells10e_20050110.htm