One of the world's leading researchers into spinal cord injuries says China could hold the key to a cure that he has been searching for since he met late actor Christopher Reeve in the 1990s.
US-based Doctor Wise Young first used the word "cure" in relation to his work after a conversation with Reeve, the "Superman" hero who became quadriplegic in an equestrian accident in 1995.
Reeve contacted him looking for help and the two became close friends. The actor died of heart failure in 2004 at the age of 52, having devoted his life to raising awareness about spinal cord injuries and stem-cell research.
But it was a star of a different sort, Chinese gymnast Sang Lan, who set Young on the path he believes has brought a cure closer than ever, thanks to ground-breaking clinical trials of stem-cell therapy he is conducting in China.
Sang crushed her spine during a routine warm-up exercise at the Goodwill Games in New York in 1998. She met Young as she underwent treatment and rehabilitation in the United States over the next 12 months.
"Her parents came to me and asked whether or not there would ever be a cure for her, and I said we're working very hard on it," recalled Young, who was by then one of the leading US experts on spinal cord injuries.
"When she went back to China after doing her rehabilitation in New York she cried and asked how would therapies go from the United States to China.
"In those days China was still relatively poor and backward so she didn't think that any therapy would be coming from China. So I started in 1999 to talk to all the spinal cord doctors in China."
He said the result was China Spinal Cord Injury Net, the world's largest clinical trial network for spinal cord therapies. Established in Hong Kong in 2005, it is about to expand into Europe, India and the United States.
