One small step for a rat: Researchers reveal groundbreaking treatment that let paralysed animals walk again could …

Using a cocktail of drugs and electrical impulses, researchers can regrow nerves linking the spinal cord to the brain After two weeks, the animals were able to walk, climb stairs and run Team say they are preparing five patients for human trials of the technology

By Nick Mcdermott and Mark Prigg

PUBLISHED: 06:17 EST, 18 February 2013 | UPDATED: 10:06 EST, 18 February 2013

Scientists behind groundbreaking research that enabled enabled rats with severed spines to run again after two weeks have outlined their plans for human trials.

The technology brings fresh hope to sufferers of spinal cord injuries, and the team say they hope the first humans could be implanted with the technology within months.

Using a cocktail of drugs and electrical impulses, researchers hope to begin testing the project to regrow nerves linking the spinal cord to the brain in five patients in a Swiss clinic.

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Using a cocktail of drugs and electrical impulses, researchers regrew nerves linking the spinal cord to the brain, allowing rats to walk, run and even climb stairs. The team now say human trials will begin within two years

Last June in the journal Science, Grgoire Courtine, of the cole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne (EPFL), reported that rats in his lab are not only voluntarily initiating a walking gait, but they were sprinting, climbing up stairs, and avoiding obstacles after a couple of weeks of neurorehabilitation with a combination of a robotic harness and electrical and chemical stimulation.

At the 2013 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Boston, Courtine revealed the next step for the research.

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One small step for a rat: Researchers reveal groundbreaking treatment that let paralysed animals walk again could ...