Professor Tal Dvir is the extraordinary man behind a world-first breakthrough which uses patient tissue samples and technology to transform injured spinal cords.

It is done via a process that mimics the development of the spinal cord in human embryos and Professor Dvir says animal trials have shown an approx. 80% success rate in restoring walking abilities in chronic paralysis models.

He will address an Australian audience on the 28th of March 2022 via Zoom.

“We are currently preparing for the next stage of the study i.e., clinical trials. Our multi-disciplinary team from Tel Aviv University has engineered 3D human spinal cord tissue and implanted them in lab models with long-term chronic paralysis.

We hope that within around two-three years, the personalised engineered tissue will be implanted in paralysed individuals enabling them to stand up and walk again.”

“The results of the study have been published in the prestigious scientific journal Advanced Science,” says Professor Dvir.

“Human spinal cord implants were implanted in lab models which were divided into two groups: those who had only recently been paralysed (the acute model) and those who had been paralysed for a long time – equivalent to a year in human terms (the chronic model). Following the implantation, 100% of the lab models with acute paralysis and 80% of those with chronic paralysis regained their ability to walk.”

"The model animals underwent a rapid rehabilitation process, at the end of which they could walk quite well.

This is the first instance in the world in which implanted engineered human spinal cord tissues have generated recovery in an animal model for long-term chronic paralysis – the most relevant model for paralysis treatments in humans.

There are millions of people around the world who are paralysed due to spinal injury, and there is still no effective treatment for their condition.

Individuals injured at a very young age are destined to sit in a wheelchair for the rest of their lives, bearing all the social, financial, and health-related costs of paralysis.

Our goal is to produce personalized spinal cord implants for every paralysed person, enabling regeneration of the damaged tissue with no risk of rejection” says Professor Dvir.

However, Professor Dvir’s work does not stop there. “We are designing and developing smart bio and nanomaterials and technologies for engineering complex tissues such as the heart, brain, intestine, kidney and eyes.”

“We were the first in the world to print an entire small-scale human heart with blood vessels and I foresee that within ten years we will be able to replace diseased organs with engineered tissue”, says Professor Dvir.