Chennai, June 12: Presenting three paraplegics with “remarkable” levels of improvement from stem cell therapy, Chennai’s Lifeline Institute of? Stem Cell Therapy and Research (LISTR) collaborating with an Indo-Japanese institute called the Nichi Centre for Regenerative Medicine, on Tuesday claimed it had scored the “largest success series from stem cell therapy in the world.”

In February this year, Lifeline had presented Akbar Ali (24) before the media as a paralytic who had shown the most remarkable recovery till date from stem cell therapy. Ali who was painting a building in Dubai when he fell down from the fourth floor and damaged his spinal chord and was paralysed below the waist. After an autologous (own body) stem cell therapy in December last year, Ali told the media a couple of months later that he had recovered 80 per cent. “I have now recovered almost 100 per cent of sensation and motor ability. I am thrilled,” Mr Ali told reporters at a press conference convened by Lifeline.

?His story in the media inspired 19-year-old Prabhdeep Singh of Punjab, to wheel himself into Lifeline in March this year. Totally paralysed for five months after his car hit a tree, the youth had given up hope of normal life but Ali’s recovery revealed light at the end of the tunnel. “I can walk with calipers and a walker now,” Singh told the media, proudly demonstrating his ability to move around without the wheelchair. “We administered a dose of stem cells from his bone marrow and Singh has shown remarkable recovery,” said Dr. J S Rajkumar, chairman of Lifeline.

The specialist presented a third positive case in Chennai of K Srinivas (21), who said he was paralysed below the chest after a devastating spinal chord inflammation known as transverse myelitis in 1999. “I began walking in 2002 with the calipers. But then, I would get tired very fast.” Lifeline gave Srinivas the first dose of stem cells in March. “Now, I can walk with less tiredness,” he said.

A R Kothanda Reddy from Bangalore completed Dr Rajkumar’s group of hope-providers. He was paralysed? below the waist after he had fallen from a height of 11 feet while standing on the roof of a building and suffered multiple fractures in the lumbar spine. Reddy was wheeled into Lifeline last month. A ‘concentrated dose’ of stem cells was injected into the injured spine portion. “Now I can flex my toes and I have sensation there,’’ Reddy said.
“This is the largest series of successful treatment of spinal chord damage documented in the scientific world,” Dr Rajkumar said.