With stem cells, Md. biotech helps paralyzed rats to walk again

Even as the storm over stem cell research continues to rage, a Maryland company is on the brink of a breakthrough.

Neuralstem Inc. - possibly the state's only private firm doing research on controversial fetal-derived stem cells - is on the verge of publishing the results of a study in which paralyzed rats were walking again after undergoing stem cell transplants.

Once we publish, it will be clear that we're hitting something that is imminent for the future of the public, said Richard Garr, president and chief executive officer of the Rockville-based company, which was founded eight years ago to study how stem cells could be used to restore function to damaged areas of the central nervous system.

Neuralstem's study, conducted by researchers at the University of California San Diego, was designed to measure if spinal cord stem cell transplants can help people recover from paralysis caused during heart surgery by deprivation of blood to their spinal cords.

Known as ischemic spastic paraplegia, the condition is characterized by jerkiness of the legs and lower body. Researchers believe the jerkiness, also called spasticity, results from an irreversible loss of specialized spinal cord cells that control motor function.

The condition often worsens over time as more neurons are lost.

What happens is that the small inhibitory neurons in the spinal cord die, they control the movement, said Martin Marsala, the University of California researcher who led the study. Once they are lost, there is no inhibition in the lower extremities. In our case, we try to replace the inhibitory neurons.

During the study, Marsala and his team induced spinal ischemia by clamping the aorta of some 20 rats, which were then injected up to 30 times each with about 10,000 cells.

Within an average of three weeks about 50 percent of the rats started to show less spasticity and enhanced movement in their legs.

Although the just-finished study is modeled on the kind of spinal cord injury that occurs during surgery - usually due to the clamping of the blood flow to the spinal cord while repairs to the aorta are made - the procedure applies to the area of traumatic spinal cord injury generally.

According to the Spinal Cord Injury Information Network, there are about 11,000 new cases of spinal cord injury each year.

For us, the main point is to get into humans and show we can cure a disease, said Garr.

For now, the company, which started out studying dopamine- producing brain cells to treat Parkinson disease, is spending 100 percent of its time and money on pushing its technology into clinical trials.

A recently concluded contract with the U.S. Department of Defense to develop compounds to improve the cognitive ability of sleep- deprived soldiers brought the company, which has struggled through the years to raise money, about $2.5 million.

And in January, Garr will come out of his self-proclaimed hibernation for another round of fundraising.

People still think stem cells are going to become an outlaw industry, said Garr. But the debate [over stem cell research] will be very different when it is not hypothetical.

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