I’m finally feeling optimistic about a cure for spinal injuries

Not long after I first came home in a wheelchair there was, on the news, vivid footage of rats with severed spines scampering along a treadmill. The nerves had been regrown in a lab. Researchers, said the report, were hopeful that in five to ten years’ time the therapy would be used on humans.
Even cynical old me couldn’t suppress a surge of hope. Only five years! I soon wised up. It took much less than five years to realise that everything in spinal research is five to ten years away and when you get there, those green shoots have been replaced by alternative shoots, which are another five to ten years away.
Nearly 15 years on, those rats are but a wry memory. There have been promising advances in electrical stimulation of the spine, but most other promising initiatives have failed to make the difficult and costly transition from laboratory to clinic. Which is the story of so much science.
Supporting spinal charities also came to frustrate me, because I sensed that nowhere, globally, was there oversight of the whole picture. I wanted to believe that one day there would be a cure, but it was going to take far too long. Duplication and compartmentalisation of effort, plus the absence of any central way to steer research, put paid to real progress. And no one had sufficient money — all the valiant charity swims and JustGivings in the world were never going to raise enough.
So I did what all paralysed people eventually do, which was to turn inwards and get on with my life as best I could.
Recently, however, I learnt about an exciting development. After many false dawns, it has reignited real hope in me. For the first time, some deeply committed, serious people with deep pockets are bringing the power of global venture capitalism to bear on the problem.
Willie Watt, Ian Curtis and Adrien Cohen are wealthy businessmen, investors and entrepreneurs. More crucially, each knows the grief of watching a beloved member of their family break their spine. “When it happens to your children is when you realise what it means,” says Watt.
His son, Nick, got a neck injury playing rugby as a schoolboy in 2008 and was in the same spinal unit as I was (staff still talked fondly about him). Curtis’s daughter, Lara, broke her neck in a diving accident when she was 17, ten years ago. Cohen,the London-based French CEO they have hired to revolutionise the approach to spinal research, saw his brother break his back three years ago. Afterwards, Cohen contacted 40 teams of scientists across the world, all working on spinal projects — but felt none was on a trajectory for recovery or cures. “People were doing stuff that had been done two years ago,” he says.
The three have created SCI Ventures — SCI stands for spinal cord injuries — an investment fund based in New York but built emotionally in the UK. It already has $27 million and aims to raise $40 million before the end of the year. On board are five big international charities: the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, Wings for Life, Spinal Research, Promobilia Foundation and the Shepherd Center, plus various private investors.
The goal is to revolutionise spinal injury research through a huge potential market — the estimated 15.4 million people worldwide with damaged spines, plus neurological conditions with common ground, such as strokes, motor neurone disease, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s. The mission is simple: the market forces scientists to industrialise their approach, collaborate and increase efficiency. It rewards start-ups and gets promising ideas into a clinical setting.
The same venture philanthropy model has already brought significant advances in cystic fibrosis and juvenile diabetes and, although I didn’t realise it, SCI Ventures has already affected me. It backed the company Onward Medical, which made my recent hand therapy possible. It is a profoundly human story about mending tragedy by harnessing the might of business — and it makes me feel positive.
@Mel_ReidTimesMelanie Reid is tetraplegic after breaking her neck and back in a riding accident in April 2010