A clinical trial out of the University of California San Diego School of Medicine found that neural stem cell transplantation had shown long-term safety and feasibility for treating chronic spinal cord injuries.
Researchers followed four patients who had spinal cord injuries for five years, and two of them showed "durable evidence of neurological improvement" after treatment with the stem cell implantation, according to a Dec. 17 feature from the university. All four patients tolerated the treatments well, the study found.
With these results, researchers plan to initiate phase 2 of the trial.
The findings were published in the Dec. 17 edition of Cell Reports Medicine.