Superman’s Doctor Visiting NZ

22 February 2011

One of the world's leading neuroscientists is in NZ this week to raise awareness about his clinical trials treating spinal cord injury.

Dr Wise Young, M.D., Ph.D. is the founding director of the W.M. Keck Center for Collaborative Neuroscience, a professor at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and the first person to hold the Richard H. Shindell Chair in Neuroscience.

A leader in the field, Dr Young developed the first standardised rat spinal cord injury model used worldwide for testing therapies, formed the first consortium funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to test promising therapies, and helped establish several widely accepted clinical outcome measures in spinal cord injury research.

Since 2007, Dr Young has been leading a 25 centre trial in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan using umbilical cord blood and lithium to regenerate the spinal cord.

“Both cord blood and lithium have a long history of being used safely as effective therapies.

The combination of both cord blood cells and lithium holds exciting promise – as numerous studies have shown that umbilical cord blood stem cells improve spinal cord function in rats.

We also know that lithium increases the production of neurotrophins (proteins that stimulate the growth of nerve cells) by cord blood stem cells,” said Dr Young.

Based on the outcome of these trials, Dr Young is planning a multicentre phase 3 trial in the United States using cord blood and lithium combined with intense rehabilitation for the treatment of chronic spinal cord injury in adults aged 18 – 65 years old. Further trials involving older patients (aged 65 – 80) and those aged 8 -17 also are being planned.

In the US, Dr Young also is well known as the doctor who worked with actor Christopher Reeve (Superman) who became quadriplegic after his 1995 horseback-riding accident.

Dr. Young said Reeves taught him not to be afraid.

“I was afraid to use the word “cure.”

And I think what he taught me was to be ambitious for people with spinal cord injury and to not be afraid to try to aim for the highest possible goal.”
In New Zealand there is 1 new spinal cord injury every 5 days, mostly resulting from motor vehicle accidents (39.3%), sport and recreation (25.9%) and work-related incidents (17.4%). (ref: www.catwalk.org.nz)
Since 2002, thousands of NZ families have banked their babies’ umbilical cord blood with CordBank to ensure it will be available for future medical use.

ENDS