A lots of peoples in the world were paralysed and not able to move their hands and legs after an accident or because of some disease that damage our spinal cord..
A group of scientists from King College London used gene therapy for recovering spinal cord. They tested their gene therapy model on rats and they were succeeded to their test as those rats were able to move their front paws after using gene therapy.
What is Gene Therapy?
In this experiment on rats scientists were able to repair a wounded spinal cord with scar tissue. Because of scar no new connection couldn’t build up in between two nerve.
What they did is that they provide cells a new set of genetic instructions to the scar to break the scar.
They gave an injection on spinal cord that contains a gene which provide a enzyme called chondroitinase . They used a virus to deliver them.
After that they used drugs to activate the gene. Those rats recovered after using gene therapy technique for two months. Because of this gene therapy a new connection started building between nerve cells of spinal cord.
Although this clinical trial didn’t started on humans till now but scientist confirmed that in near future by use of gene therapy millions of paralysed peoples because of spinal cord injury can be able to move their body parts successfully.
Also read this news: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-29645760