By Don C. Reed

On September 10th, 1994, my son Roman Reed received a spinal cord injury while playing college football. One moment he was having a superb game at middle linebacker, with eleven solo tackles and a diving one-hand interception; the next he collided with a 351 pound blocker and went down.

He has been paralyzed ever since. For 26 years he has endured the agonies of the damned, with no days off, never one moment when he is not paralyzed.

Wherever possible, we have turned to science. When my daughter Desiree heard about an experimental medication (Sygen) going into clinical trials, I tried to get Roman in, but missed the deadline by one hour. I obtained the medication from Switzerland anyway, and went deep in debt to pay for the injections and six months of physical therapy. His mother Gloria had the house rebuilt (more debt) for adapted living.

Time passed and Roman and his wife Terri had three wonderful children, Roman Jr., Jason, and Katherine.

California named a law after him, the Roman Reed Spinal Cord Injury Research Act of 1999, which funded some of the world’s first stem cell paralysis research. Dr. Hans Keirstead made paralyzed rats walk again in the Roman Reed Lab at UC Irvine. Roman helped develop a similar law, the T.J. Atchison Spinal Cord Injury Research Act in Alabama.

Tom Okarma of Geron Inc., fought to take the research to clinical trials, before his company backed out of the stem cell effort for financial reasons.

Fortunately, Ed Wirth, Joe Gold, Jane Lebkowski and other scientists and entrepreneurs kept faith, so that Asterias Biotherapeutics (later Lineage Cell Therapeutics) continued, using OPC-1 the original stem cell line developed by Dr. Keirstead with funding from a Roman Reed grant.

But while these were strong steps forward, they paled in comparison with Proposition 71, the $3 billion California Stem Cell Research Proposition, begun and led by Bob Klein.

Officially titled the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) the stem cell program brought many forms of chronic illness and injury research forward, fighting for cure.

The clinical trials for paralysis have continued. The results?

No one was made worse, achieving the goal of safety; “First, do no harm”.

With safety established, greater quantities of cells were given to the next group of newly paralyzed volunteers. Improvements came, increased upper body strength and control. People like Jake Javier became visibly stronger and more active, returning to college.

But other problems emerged. The stem cell treatments were only for new injuries, the “acutes”, and that was not enough. Everyone wants the “chronic” injuries to be improved: people who have been paralyzed for more than just a few days. There was also the difficulty of the scar left by the injury, which formed a barrier to messages between brain and body.

How to get around the scar?

UCSD’s Mark Tuszynski hopes the concept of “relays” will answer that problem. Using a dye marker revealed his progress — x-rays show a flood of green leaping over the scar.

“Dr. T” used stem cells imbedded in gel, plus a nerve “fertilizer” — and gained chronic results. The rats that were tested in the study gained significant hand control (50% function) even after more than a year post-injury — a long time in spinal cord injury terms!

Dr. Tuszynski showed good success even with severe injuries, like rats with completely severed spines, which could move all four limbs. He was able to duplicate this with rhesus monkeys as well.

Dr. Eve Yi Sun is best known for her work fighting Rett Syndrome, a vicious disease which attacks young girls, afflicting them with lack of motor control.

She works at UCLA on a CIRM grant.

But she also commutes to the Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Biomedical Engineering, at Beihang University in Beijing, China, where she fights paralysis.

She and Dr. Xiaoguang Li developed a way to remove the spinal cord injury scar, with an MRI device to “Guide the excision of scar tissue.” After that, a gel called NT3-chitosan (a nerve fertilizer, perhaps similar to Tuszynski’s) was placed in the wound., “to enable SCI repair and monitor regeneration, potentially in patients entering…the chronic phase.” — http://www.xinhuanet.com/English/2018–05/31/c_137220891.htm

CIRM has spent roughly $53 million ($52,626,285.00) working toward the alleviation or cure of spinal cord injury paralysis.

By law, that money must be spent in California. But international cooperation allows us to get more bang from the buck. So, we pay our scientists, they pay theirs, and both sides publish their work.

It is vital that the California stem cell program continue.

Proposition 14 would make that happen, by continuing the funding for CIRM.

If CIRM continues, I believe Christopher Reeve’s great prediction may come true.

The man millions thought of as “our Christopher” kindly dictated an introduction to my first book, “STEM CELL BATTLES”, saying:

“One day, Roman and I will stand up from our wheelchairs, and walk away from them forever.”

Cure did not come in time for the paralyzed Superman, but the flame of his faith still guides our way.

We will, as he always said, “Go forward!” — and we will prevail.

On November 3rd, vote YES! on Proposition 14: the California Stem Cell Research, Treatments and Cures Initiative of 2020.

Do it for someone who drives a wheelchair.

Don C. Reed is the author of “REVOLUTIONARY THERAPIES: How the California Stem Cell Program Saved Lives, Eased Suffering, and Changed the Face of Medicine Forever”, from World Scientific Publishing, Inc., 2020

P.S. Want an overview on how CIRM is fighting spinal cord injury? Go to:

https://www.cirm.ca.gov/our­progress/disease­information/spinal­cord­injury­fact­sheet

There are numerous videos,(including one featuring Roman!) general interest

explanatory pieces — and 21 links to attempts to defeat spinal cord injury paralysis. Some are focused on total cure; others choose one aspect of the problem.

Below is a quick summary of CIRM paralysis cure research projects:

1.Brian Cummings, University of California, Irvine: Effect of … drugs on stem cell proliferation, gene expression, and differentiation in… spinal cord injury;

2. Mark Tuszynski, University of California, San Diego: neural stem cell relays for severe spinal cord injury;

3. Ziwei Huang, Sanford­Burnham Medical Research Institute:…therapeutics targeting stem cell migration

4. Aileen Anderson, University of California, Irvine: …neural stem cell lines to predict …efficacy for chronic cervical spinal cord injury.

5. Hans Keirstead, University of California, Irvine: hESC­Derived motor neurons for the treatment of cervical spinal cord injury;

6. Martin Marsala, University of California, San Diego: …paraplegia: modulation by human embryonic stem cell implant;

7. Martin Marsala. University of California, San Diego: induction of immune tolerance after spinal grafting of human ES­derived neural precursors;

8. Jane Lebkowski, Asterias Biotherapeutics: evaluation of safety and preliminary

efficacy of escalating doses of GRNOPC1 in subacute spinal cord injury;

9. Arnold Kriegstein, University of California, San Francisco: human ES cell­derived MGE inhibitory interneuron transplantation for spinal cord injury;

10. Mark Tuszynski, University of California, San Diego: functional neural relay

formation by human neural stem cell grafting in spinal cord injury;

11. Eric Ahrens, University of California, San Diego: molecular imaging for stem cell science and clinical application research;

12. Samantha Butler, University of California, Los Angeles assessing the mechanism by which the bone morphogenetic proteins direct stem cell fate;

13. Jane Lebkowski, Asterias Biotherapeutics: Phase I/IIa dose escalation safety study of AST­OPC1 in patients with cervical complete spinal cord injury;

14. Catriona Jamieson, University of California, San Diego: alpha stem cell clinic for the development of regenerative therapies;

15. Bennett Novitch, University of California, Los Angeles: molecular characterization of hESC and hIPSC­derived spinal motor neurons;

16. Sarah Heilshorn, Stanford University: injectable hydrogels for the delivery,

maturation, and engraftment of human induced pluripotent stem cell­derived neural

progenitors to the central nervous system;

17. Aileen Anderson, University of California, Irvine: role of the microenvironment in human iPS and NSC fate and tumorigenesis;

18. Leif Havton, University of California, Irvine: repair of conus medullaris/cauda equina injury using human ES cell­derived motor neurons;

19. Leif Havton, University of California, Los Angeles: development of a pre­clinical animal model…to evaluate human stem cell­derived replacement therapies for motor neuron injuries and degenerative diseases;

20. Binhai Zheng, University of California, San Diego: Genetic manipulation of humanembryonic stem cells and its application in studying CNS development and repair;

21. David Schaffer, University of California, Berkeley: scalable production of

oligodendrocyte precursor cells to treat neural disease and injury.

Available for the clicking of a computer button, www.cirm.ca.gov is a library of information, pieces of the puzzle of cure.

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