Groundbreaking treatment that enabled paralysed animals to walk again will be tested on humans within months

Scientists behind groundbreaking research that enabled rats with severed spines to run again after two weeks have outlined their plans for human trials.

The technology brings fresh hope to sufferers of spinal cord injuries, and the team say they hope the first humans could be implanted with the technology within months.

Using a cocktail of drugs and electrical impulses, researchers hope to begin testing the project to ‘regrow’ nerves linking the spinal cord to the brain in five patients in a Swiss clinic.

Last June in the journal Science, Grégoire Courtine, of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), reported that rats in his lab are not only voluntarily initiating a walking gait, but they were sprinting, climbing up stairs, and avoiding obstacles after a couple of weeks of neurorehabilitation with a combination of a robotic harness and electrical and chemical stimulation.

At the 2013 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Boston, Courtine revealed the next step for the research.

He has since repeated the study in rats with bruised spines, which more closely resembles human trauma patients, and after a few weeks they could walk with no assistance.

He now believes that the technique could help people who have been immobile for up to two years.

Although full human trials are still a few years off, he plans to attempt electrical stimulation on five patients who have limited leg movement in the coming months.

‘We know that spinal cord stimulation is safe, we know that training is good, so we want to start the first trial in people who can move their legs but cannot walk independently.

'So we will implant five patients, we have a new technology which allows us to stimulate the spinal cord of humans just like we do in the rats.’

Once they have refined the technique, they hope to fully rehabilitate patients with moderately damaged spines, while others would regain some movement.

‘We already have preliminary data from the rats with these clinically relevant lesions is that a number of them would recover at the end of the training and could walk without any help. It depends on the severity of the damage,’ he said.

‘But if you talk to the patient and you tell them at least you could use it at home to cook, to watch TV and have normal activity, they say their life would be so different. So it is less ambitious, but we are talking about improving the quality of life, allowing people to stand and take a few steps at home with a walker.’