Racing across the sports field with your children. Strolling down the street for a coffee. Swimming free in the ocean. For those with spinal cord injuries, these everyday joys have seemed out of reach. But now, Professor James St John and his colleagues are working on a way to restore this most essential part of the central nervous system – and give new hope to those with these life-changing injuries.
If their method works, it could be a game-changer. So far there’s no way to mend spinal cord damage, because those damaged nerves in the spine don’t regenerate. That means that those with spinal cord injuries can permanently lose the ability to walk, to control their muscles, bowels and bladder, or even to feel. But nerves in another part of our body do regenerate – our noses.
Cell cleanup
Every day, the insides of our noses are damaged by everything they have to deal with as we take a breath: chemicals, germs and particles. Luckily, they’re full of nerves that sacrifice themselves to protect our nervous system – and then get help to regenerate, from a cell known as an olfactory ensheathing cell. These cells not only wrap up or ensheathe the nerves that detect odours, but also clean up the dead nerves and help new ones to grow.
Perhaps, St John and his colleagues reasoned, they could harness the power of the olfactory ensheathing cells to help nerves in the spinal cord regenerate too. “So, we’re taking them from the nose and putting them into the spinal cord,” he says. They’ve made tiny ‘nerve bridges’ out of the cells and will implant six of them into the spinal cords of 20 volunteers who have been living with spinal cord injury for more than a year. Then they’ll wait to see if these cells will encourage nerves to grow in the spine, just as they do in our noses – and restore at least some lost function.
Small gains, big impact
How will they know if they’ve succeeded? It could be something as small as a participant being able to move a finger for the first time, or regain some control over their bladder – and, of course, they’ll also use imaging and neurological tests to monitor how the implants behave. “We’re aiming low but hoping for high,” St John says.
It's been a long journey just to get to this point. St John’s collaborator and colleague at Griffith, the late Professor Emeritus Alan Mackay-Sim AM, worked tirelessly to prove that this approach was safe in humans. It took him 20 years of research but he did it, and Alan was awarded Australian of the Year 2017.
Future focus
After Mackay-Sim’s discoveries, more researchers took up the baton. One study looked into the effectiveness of injecting olfactory ensheathing cells into the spinal cord at the site of an injury. They had some promising results – in one case, a man whose spinal cord had been severed in a stabbing four years earlier regained the ability to walk – but overall, outcomes were mixed.
Now, thanks to generous philanthropic and government support, the work continues. The new study starts in 2025 and hopes to identify the type of injuries that may be more likely to respond to the treatment. And St John hopes it will deliver a life-changing product.
“We’re here to create impact,” he says. “This work isn’t just for publication, but for people.”
Image captions (top to bottom):
- Professor James St John in the lab
- Professor James St John with Perry Cross AM DUniv
- Professor James St John with colleagues in the lab
Explore more from the newsletter
Stay connected
Keep in touch with your alumni community.
