  News Alert Update, Sheba Medical Center at
Tel Hashomer, Israel Sheba's work breeds success for paralysis patients and earns the attention of Christopher Reeve, who has high praise and even higher hopes for this unique treatment. Again, Sheba is on the cutting edge of medical innovations that bring the prospect of brighter futures to patients from around the nation. Na'amat Woman Spring 2004 Hope for the Paralyzed When paralyzed actor Christopher Reeve visited Israel in July 2003 on a medical fact-finding mission, he was eager to meet a young man named Hashem. That's because Hashem, an Israeli Arab, had regained a great deal of feeling and mobility in his body despite having been almost completely paralyzed in an accident more than two years ago. Initially, Hashem was unable to feel or move any part of his body below his upper back. Today, he is able to walk with leg braces, and has regained use of his bladder. This remarkable transformation occurred a few months after Hashem's doctors enrolled him in a Phase I clinical trial for paralyzed patients at Sheba Hospital in Tel Hashomer near Tel Aviv. The experimental procedure, which was pioneered by Professor Michael Schwartz at the Weizmann Institute and is currently being developed by Proneuron Biotechnologies in Delaware, employs the patients' own immune system. During the first clinical trials, more than a dozen paralyzed patients from around the world were flown to Israel for the procedure, all of them with severe spinal cord trauma. Despite their severe injuries, all could breathe on their own and their spinal cords were not severed. The treatment, conducted soon after the spinal cord injury, employs "activated macrophages," which are part of white blood cells culled from the patient's bone marrow. They are combined with a skin graft from the patient and injected into the damaged part of the spinal column. "Approximately 30 percent of the 16 patients who participated in the first clinical trials experienced significant improvement in the sensory and motor skills," said Dr. David Snyder, vice president of clinical development at Proneuron Biotechnologies. Snyder called the results "very promising and exciting," particularly since only "2 to 3 percent of paralyzed patients who have not undergone the procedure experience this kind of recovery." In a May 2003 newspaper interview, Dennis O'Malley, the president of Craig Hospital in Englewood, Colorado, which is slated to begin Phase II clinical trials along with other facilities, called the experimental treatment "an important piece in the puzzle, or at least it has that potential, because we've seen some pretty impressive results in a small clinical trial [in Tel Aviv]." Two patients in Colorado were flown to Israel for the Phase I trial. One of them, Melissa Holly, has regained significant feeling and movement. Phase II trials are already under way at Sheba Hospital. For more information, please contact:
Lauri Novick, Executive Director, Friends of Sheba - Tel Hashomer: New York
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