Repairing the Body: Spinal Injuries, Blindness, and Regeneration

What Medicine Cannot Fix

Marcus was 24 when the motorcycle accident severed his spinal cord. One moment, a summer afternoon on a mountain road. The next, a hospital bed where doctors explained that he would never walk again. His legs weren't gone—he could see them, lying motionless under the sheets—but the connection was cut. The signals from his brain couldn't reach his muscles. His muscles couldn't report back to his brain. Everything below his chest was present but unreachable.

That was twelve years ago. Marcus has adapted. He works, has relationships, finds meaning. But he also hasn't given up hope. He follows the research—the studies in mice, the early human trials, the endless promises of breakthroughs that never quite arrive. He's learned to calibrate expectations, to distinguish hype from progress, to keep hoping without being destroyed when hope disappoints.

Stories like Marcus's number in the millions. Spinal cord injury affects approximately 18 million people globally.¹ Blindness and severe visual impairment affect over 40 million.² Organ failure—heart, kidney, liver, lung—kills hundreds of thousands annually for lack of transplants.³ Limb loss changes millions of lives each year.⁴

These are the conditions medicine has struggled to repair. It can manage, compensate, help patients adapt—but it cannot restore what was lost. The brain heals slowly if at all. Spinal cords don't reconnect. Eyes don't regrow. Organs don't regenerate.

Until, perhaps, now.

The technologies described in this chapter—neural interfaces, regenerative medicine, bioengineered organs, and gene therapies—offer paths to repair that didn't exist a generation ago. Some are already in clinical trials. Others remain experimental. All are being accelerated by AI.

The question is no longer whether the body can be repaired, but how soon, how completely, and for whom.

2026 Snapshot — Where Repair Medicine Stands

Spinal Cord Injury

For most of history, spinal cord injury meant paralysis for life. The spinal cord—unlike the peripheral nervous system—doesn't regenerate. Severed connections stay severed.

Current clinical approaches:

Acute stabilization: Surgery to decompress the spinal cord and stabilize the spine, limiting secondary damage
Rehabilitation: Physical therapy, occupational therapy, and adaptive strategies to maximize remaining function
Epidural stimulation: Electrical stimulation below the injury site that can restore some voluntary movement in carefully selected patients⁵
Exoskeletons: Powered devices that enable walking for therapy and, in some cases, community use

Experimental approaches:

Stem cell transplants: Various cell types have been tested; results range from promising to inconclusive
Nerve regeneration therapies: Drugs and biologics that attempt to encourage axon regrowth
Brain-computer interfaces: Bypassing the spinal cord entirely by reading intentions from the brain and stimulating muscles directly

AI contribution: Analyzing neural signals to optimize stimulation parameters, predicting which patients will respond to which therapies, designing molecular interventions that promote regeneration.

The honest assessment: modest progress is real, but complete restoration of function after severe spinal cord injury remains elusive.

Blindness

Vision is extraordinarily complex—the eye captures light, converts it to neural signals, and sends those signals through the optic nerve to the brain, where they're processed into the experience of sight. Damage anywhere in this chain can cause blindness.

Causes of blindness include:

Retinal degeneration (macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa): photoreceptor cells die
Glaucoma: optic nerve damage from elevated pressure
Diabetic retinopathy: blood vessel damage to the retina
Cataracts: clouding of the lens (surgically curable)
Corneal disease: damage to the front of the eye
Congenital conditions: various genetic causes

Current treatments:

Cataract surgery restores vision for millions annually
Anti-VEGF injections slow macular degeneration
Laser treatment addresses some diabetic retinopathy
Corneal transplants replace damaged corneas
Gene therapy (Luxturna) treats one rare form of inherited blindness⁶

Experimental approaches:

Retinal implants that bypass damaged photoreceptors
Optogenetics that make remaining cells light-sensitive
Stem cell-derived photoreceptors
Gene editing for genetic forms of blindness
Cortical implants that bypass the eye entirely

AI contribution: Analyzing retinal images to detect disease earlier, designing gene therapies for specific mutations, optimizing stimulation patterns for implants.

Organ Failure and Transplantation

When organs fail completely—kidneys that no longer filter blood, hearts that no longer pump, livers that no longer detoxify—transplantation is often the only option. But organs are scarce.

Current situation:

Over 100,000 people in the US are on transplant waiting lists⁷
Approximately 6,000 die annually waiting for an organ⁸
Rejection requires lifelong immunosuppression with significant side effects
Allocation is ethically fraught—who gets the scarce organs?

Alternative approaches in development:

Xenotransplantation: organs from genetically modified pigs. Recent trials have transplanted pig kidneys and hearts into humans⁹
Bioengineered organs: growing organs from a patient's own cells, potentially eliminating rejection
Organoids: mini-organs grown in the lab that may eventually be scalable
Artificial organs: mechanical devices that replicate organ function (artificial hearts, dialysis, etc.)
Regenerative approaches: stimulating the body to repair its own damaged organs

AI contribution: Optimizing genetic modifications for xenotransplantation, designing scaffolds for tissue engineering, predicting rejection and compatibility, discovering drugs that enhance regeneration.

Notable Players

Neural Repair and Interfaces

Neuralink (Elon Musk's company) has developed high-bandwidth brain-computer interfaces with thousands of electrodes. Human trials have begun for paralysis patients.¹⁰

Synchron offers a less invasive BCI approach—a device inserted through blood vessels rather than requiring open brain surgery. Also in human trials.¹¹

Onward Medical and Medtronic are developing epidural stimulation systems for spinal cord injury.

EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) has pioneered brain-spine interfaces that read movement intentions from the brain and stimulate the spinal cord below the injury, enabling walking in previously paralyzed patients.¹²

Academic centers including Mayo Clinic, University of Louisville, and others conduct research on spinal cord regeneration and stimulation.

Vision Restoration

Second Sight developed the Argus II retinal prosthesis, though the company has faced business challenges.

Science Corp is developing high-resolution retinal interfaces.

GenSight Biologics and Nanoscope Therapeutics are pursuing optogenetic approaches to restore vision.

CRISPR Therapeutics and Editas Medicine have programs targeting genetic causes of blindness.

Spark Therapeutics (now Roche) developed Luxturna, the first FDA-approved gene therapy for an inherited disease.

Regenerative Medicine and Organs

United Therapeutics (led by Martine Rothblatt) pursues both xenotransplantation (through subsidiary Revivicor) and manufactured organs.

eGenesis develops gene-edited pigs for xenotransplantation, focusing on removing porcine retroviruses and making organs more compatible.

Organovo and other companies work on 3D bioprinting of tissues and organs.

Lygenesis is developing approaches to grow functional liver tissue in lymph nodes.

Major academic centers including Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Harvard Stem Cell Institute, and UCSF conduct foundational research.

Spinal Cord Repair: Pathways to Restoration

The spinal cord is not just a cable carrying signals—it's a complex processing system with its own neural circuits. Repairing it is not simply reconnecting wires; it's restoring an intricate biological machine.

Bioelectronic Bridges

The most dramatic recent results in spinal cord injury have come from bioelectronic approaches—using electrical stimulation to enable movement.

Epidural stimulation places electrodes on the surface of the spinal cord below the injury. Precisely patterned electrical impulses activate the spinal circuits that control movement, allowing paralyzed patients to stand, walk, and even recover some voluntary control.¹³

The mechanism: The spinal cord below the injury still contains functional circuits for walking, standing, and other movements—pattern generators that can operate semi-autonomously. What's lost is the activation signal from the brain. Stimulation provides that activation, essentially "waking up" dormant circuits.

Current limitations:

Only some patients respond
Requires surgical implantation
Movement is often labored and requires assistive devices
Continuous stimulation required for function

AI enhancement: Machine learning optimizes stimulation parameters for individual patients. AI analyzes movement patterns to adapt stimulation in real-time. Closed-loop systems that detect intention and adjust stimulation are in development.

Brain-spine interfaces go further: reading movement intentions directly from the brain and using that signal to trigger spinal stimulation. A study at EPFL enabled a patient with complete spinal cord injury to walk naturally by bridging the gap between brain and spine with electronics.¹⁴

Trajectory: Near-term likely for expanded use of stimulation approaches. The technology works; the questions are who responds, how to expand access, and whether effects can be enhanced with rehabilitation or biological interventions.

Regeneration and Reconnection

The holy grail: getting the spinal cord to actually regenerate, reconnecting severed neural pathways.

Why the spinal cord doesn't regenerate naturally:

Inhibitory molecules in the injury environment block axon growth
Scar tissue forms a physical barrier
Adult neurons have reduced intrinsic growth capacity
The distance axons must travel is substantial

Approaches to overcome these barriers:

Remove inhibition: Drugs or biologics that neutralize inhibitory molecules, allowing axons to grow. Chondroitinase ABC, anti-Nogo antibodies, and other agents have shown promise in animal studies.¹⁵

Provide growth factors: Neurotrophins and other molecules that encourage axon growth. Delivery is challenging—these molecules must reach the right places at the right times.

Bridge the gap: Scaffolds, cells, or other materials that provide a supportive substrate for regenerating axons to grow across.

Activate intrinsic growth: Gene therapy or other approaches that reprogram adult neurons to adopt a more growth-permissive state, similar to developing neurons.

Stem cell transplants: Various cell types (neural stem cells, oligodendrocyte progenitors, olfactory ensheathing cells) might support regeneration through multiple mechanisms.

AI's role: Analyzing the complex biology of regeneration failure. Identifying drug combinations that might work synergistically. Optimizing cell therapy protocols. Predicting which patients might respond to which approaches.

Current status: Animal studies show various degrees of regeneration; human translation has been slow and results mixed. No approach has yet produced reliable, substantial regeneration in chronic human injuries.

Trajectory: Plausible that AI-accelerated research identifies effective approaches within a decade. Complete restoration of function after severe, chronic injuries remains a longer-term goal—probably wild in the near term.

Combining Approaches

The most promising path may combine multiple interventions:

Biological: Drugs or gene therapies that create a permissive environment for regeneration
Cellular: Transplanted cells that bridge gaps and support regenerating axons
Electrical: Stimulation that activates dormant circuits and enhances plasticity
Rehabilitation: Intensive physical therapy that reinforces new connections

AI could help design optimal combination protocols—which interventions, in what sequence, at what doses, for which patients.

Vision Restoration: Seeing Again

Blindness has many causes, and restoration approaches differ accordingly.

Gene Therapy for Inherited Blindness

Some forms of blindness result from single-gene mutations. If the gene can be corrected, vision might be restored.

Luxturna (voretigene neparvovec) is the proof of concept. It treats RPE65-associated retinal dystrophy by delivering a functional copy of the gene using a viral vector. Children who would have gone completely blind can see well enough to navigate, recognize faces, and read.¹⁶

Limitations:

Only works for specific mutations (RPE65 affects roughly 2,000-3,000 people worldwide)
Photoreceptors must still be viable—doesn't work once cells are dead
Extremely expensive (over $400,000 per eye)

Expanding the approach:

CRISPR-based editing (rather than gene addition) for dominant mutations
Therapies for other genetic causes of blindness
Earlier treatment before photoreceptor loss

AI's role: Identifying which patients have mutations amenable to gene therapy. Designing optimal viral vectors and editing strategies. Predicting outcomes based on genetics and disease stage.

Trajectory: Near-term likely for expanded gene therapy approvals for additional genetic forms of blindness. Each new target requires its own development program, but the platform is proven.

Optogenetics: Making Cells Light-Sensitive

When photoreceptors die, remaining retinal cells (bipolar cells, ganglion cells) are still alive but no longer receive light signals. Optogenetics makes these cells light-sensitive by introducing genes for light-sensitive proteins (opsins) from other organisms.

The approach:

Deliver genes encoding opsins to surviving retinal cells via viral vector
These cells become light-sensitive (though with different properties than normal photoreceptors)
Special glasses may be needed to amplify and convert light to wavelengths the opsins respond to

Current status: Clinical trials are underway. GenSight Biologics reported that a patient with retinitis pigmentosa could perceive, locate, count, and touch objects after optogenetic therapy—the first clinical proof of partial vision restoration through this approach.¹⁷

Limitations:

Vision is different from natural sight—lower resolution, potentially different color perception
Requires genetic modification that is currently irreversible
Long-term safety and durability unknown

AI's role: Designing optimal opsins with desired light sensitivity and kinetics. Optimizing gene delivery. Developing signal processing in the glasses to present information effectively.

Trajectory: Plausible that optogenetic approaches provide useful vision for people who are otherwise completely blind. Restoration to normal vision is not the near-term goal; the goal is functional sight for navigation and object recognition.

Retinal Prosthetics

Electronic retinal implants bypass damaged photoreceptors entirely, directly stimulating the remaining retinal circuitry.

The approach:

A camera (often mounted on glasses) captures visual information
A processor converts the image into stimulation patterns
An implant stimulates retinal cells with a grid of electrodes
The brain interprets these signals as vision

Current status: Several devices have been approved or are in trials. Resolution is limited by the number of electrodes—current devices provide something like 60-1500 points of light, far below the millions of photoreceptors in a healthy eye. Users can perceive shapes, navigate, and in some cases read large letters.¹⁸

Challenges:

Limited resolution
Surgical complexity
Long-term stability and biocompatibility
Cost and access

AI's role: Optimizing stimulation patterns to maximize perceptual quality with limited electrodes. Developing image processing that emphasizes useful features. Predicting which patients will benefit most.

Trajectory: Near-term likely for continued improvement in resolution and usability. Plausible for devices that provide functional vision for many daily tasks. Restoration to full natural vision through electronics alone remains distant.

Cortical Visual Prosthetics

The most dramatic approach: bypass the eye entirely and stimulate the visual cortex directly.

The concept: If the eyes and optic nerve are damaged beyond repair, but the visual cortex is intact, direct cortical stimulation might produce the experience of sight.

Current status: Research-stage. Orion (Second Sight) and other efforts have demonstrated that cortical stimulation produces phosphenes—the perception of light. Early participants can perceive shapes and locate objects.¹⁹

Challenges:

Brain surgery required
Understanding how the visual cortex encodes visual information is incomplete
Risk of seizures and other complications
Current resolution is very low

AI's role: Decoding visual cortex processing to improve stimulation patterns. Optimizing electrode placement and stimulation parameters. Learning what stimulation patterns produce desired percepts.

Trajectory: Plausible for providing useful vision to people blind from eye and optic nerve damage. This is likely a longer timeline than retinal approaches given the surgical complexity and state of technology.

Organ Regeneration and Replacement

When organs fail, replacement is often the only option. But organs are scarce, and mechanical replacements are imperfect. What if new organs could be grown?

Xenotransplantation: Organs from Pigs

Pigs are anatomically similar to humans, breed quickly, and can be engineered genetically. The idea of using pig organs for human transplants has been pursued for decades, but the obstacles were formidable:

Hyperacute rejection: Human immune systems attack pig tissue immediately
Porcine endogenous retroviruses (PERVs): Viruses embedded in pig genomes that might infect humans
Physiological incompatibility: Subtle differences in organ function

Recent breakthroughs:

CRISPR enables precise genetic modification of pigs, knocking out rejection-triggering genes and PERVs
Companies have created pigs with dozens of genetic modifications to make organs more compatible
In 2022, a pig heart was transplanted into a human patient (David Bennett), who survived for two months²⁰
Pig kidneys have been transplanted into brain-dead patients and maintained function for extended periods²¹

Current status: Experimental, but advancing rapidly. The Bennett case revealed both the promise (the heart functioned) and challenges (he died, partly due to a pig virus that wasn't screened for). More trials are planned.

AI's role: Designing optimal genetic modifications. Predicting compatibility and rejection risk. Monitoring for zoonotic disease transmission. Optimizing post-transplant immunosuppression.

Trajectory: Plausible that pig organs become a clinical option within a decade for patients without human donor options. Routine use as first-line treatment is likely further out, pending safety and outcomes data.

Bioengineered Organs: Growing Replacements

The ultimate goal: grow a new organ from a patient's own cells, eliminating rejection entirely.

Approaches:

Decellularized scaffolds: Take a donor organ, remove all cells (leaving only the structural scaffold), repopulate with the recipient's cells. This has been demonstrated in lab settings for simpler tissues.²²

3D bioprinting: Print tissues layer by layer using living cells as "ink." Current capabilities include small tissue structures; full organs remain challenging due to the complexity of vascular networks.

Organoids: Stem cells can self-organize into mini-organs in the lab. These are useful for research but currently too small and simple to replace failing organs.

Tissue engineering: Growing tissues on scaffolds in bioreactors with appropriate mechanical and chemical stimulation.

Current limitations:

Vascularization: organs need blood vessels; engineering sufficient vasculature is hard
Scale: growing organ-sized tissues is harder than growing small samples
Maturation: tissues need to develop functional properties, not just structure
Manufacturing: scaling up from lab demonstrations to clinical production

AI's role: Designing scaffolds and bioprinting protocols. Optimizing culture conditions. Predicting which approaches will produce functional tissues. Accelerating the design-build-test cycle.

Trajectory: Near-term likely for simpler tissues (skin, cartilage, blood vessels). Plausible for more complex organs (bladder, portions of liver) within a decade. Complete replacement organs for heart or kidney are longer-term goals—probably wild in the near term.

Stimulating Endogenous Regeneration

Some organisms regenerate spectacularly—salamanders regrow limbs, zebrafish regrow hearts. Humans have limited regenerative capacity, but it's not zero. The liver can regenerate from substantial damage. Skin heals.

What if human regenerative capacity could be enhanced?

Research directions:

Identifying the molecular signals that enable regeneration in other species
Understanding why human regeneration is limited
Developing drugs or gene therapies that activate dormant regenerative programs

Examples:

Cardiac regeneration: Baby mice can regenerate heart muscle after injury; adults cannot. Research seeks to reactivate the developmental programs²³
Limb regeneration: Studies in various organisms are identifying genes and signals involved
Liver regeneration: Understanding the signals that trigger liver regrowth

Current status: Early research. No therapies available that substantially enhance human regeneration of major organs.

AI's role: Analyzing genomic and developmental data across regenerating species. Identifying candidate genes and pathways. Designing interventions to test in model systems.

Trajectory: Wild for full limb or organ regeneration, but plausible that insights from regeneration research lead to therapies that improve wound healing or partial organ recovery.

Second-Order Impacts

If the technologies in this chapter succeed—if spinal cords can be repaired, sight restored, organs replaced or regenerated—the impacts extend far beyond individual patients.

Disability and Identity

Disability is not merely a medical condition but a social and personal identity. Deaf culture, disability rights movements, and communities of people with various conditions have their own histories, norms, and perspectives on "cure."

If spinal cord injury becomes fully reversible, what happens to the communities and identities built around wheelchair use? If blindness becomes optional, how do blind communities respond? These are not simple questions with obvious answers.

Some people with disabilities would eagerly embrace restoration technologies. Others might resist, seeing their conditions not as deficits to be fixed but as forms of human variation to be accommodated. The political and ethical dynamics will be complex.

Access and Inequality

These technologies are likely to be expensive, at least initially. Gene therapy already costs hundreds of thousands of dollars per treatment. Bioengineered organs would likely be similar or higher. Even epidural stimulation devices cost tens of thousands and require specialized surgical implantation.

Who gets access? If restoration is possible but not affordable or available, the result is a world where paralysis, blindness, and organ failure are optional—for those who can pay.

This is not a new problem (existing medical technologies are unequally distributed), but the stakes increase when the technology could fundamentally restore what was lost.

Insurance and Coverage

Insurance systems are designed around actuarial models of disease and disability. If conditions previously considered permanent become treatable, the models change.

Should insurance cover gene therapy for blindness? Should public health systems fund spinal cord stimulation? Who decides which interventions are "necessary" versus "elective"?

The line between treatment and enhancement blurs. Restoring lost function is treatment. But what about restoring function to levels beyond what the individual had before injury? What about enhancing beyond normal human capacity?

Workforce and Productivity

Millions of people are unable to work, or are limited in their work, due to conditions discussed in this chapter. If those conditions become treatable, labor force participation could increase.

This has economic effects (more productivity, more tax revenue, less disability spending) and personal effects (restoration of capacity for meaningful work). It also raises questions about disability benefits, workplace accommodation, and employment discrimination.

Military and Athletic Applications

Technologies developed for restoration inevitably attract interest from those seeking enhancement. Exoskeletons developed for paralysis patients could augment able-bodied soldiers. Neural interfaces for controlling prosthetics could enhance able-bodied performance.

The line between medical device and enhancement technology is porous. How these technologies are regulated as they move from restoration to enhancement is an open question.

Risks and Guardrails

Safety and Long-Term Effects

Many of these technologies are novel, and long-term effects are unknown:

Gene therapy creates permanent genetic changes—what happens over decades?
Neural implants involve foreign objects in the nervous system—what are long-term biocompatibility effects?
Xenotransplant recipients receive organs from other species—what are the risks of zoonotic disease or immune complications?
Stem cell therapies risk tumor formation if cells proliferate uncontrollably

Rigorous long-term follow-up is essential. Patients must understand that they are early adopters of experimental technology with unknown long-term profiles.

Premature Commercialization

The desperation of patients with incurable conditions creates markets for unproven therapies. Stem cell clinics around the world offer unvalidated treatments to patients willing to pay. Some patients are harmed; most see no benefit.

As restoration technologies advance, the pressure to offer them commercially—before adequate safety and efficacy data exist—will increase. Regulatory frameworks must balance access for desperate patients against protection from harm.

Equity in Access

The technologies described here will initially be expensive and scarce. If access is determined by ability to pay, the result is a two-tier system where the wealthy can restore what the poor must live without.

This is an ethical challenge, not merely an economic one. Decisions about pricing, coverage, and access are values decisions about what kind of society humanity wants.

Some interventions are irreversible—gene editing changes DNA permanently; removing a neural implant may not be possible or may leave damage. Patients must provide informed consent, understanding that they cannot simply undo the intervention if they change their minds.

This is particularly complex for technologies that affect the brain. If a neural implant changes someone's experience of themselves, can they provide valid consent about removal? These are edge cases now, but will become more common as technology advances.

The Path Forward

Near-term likely (5-7 years):

Expanded use of epidural stimulation for spinal cord injury
Additional gene therapies for genetic forms of blindness
Brain-computer interfaces enabling control of external devices for paralysis patients
First xenotransplants in broader clinical trials
Improved bioprinted tissues for simpler structures (skin, cartilage)

Plausible (7-15 years):

Brain-spine interfaces enabling walking for some patients with complete spinal cord injury
Optogenetic restoration of functional vision for retinal degeneration
Pig organs as routine clinical option for patients without human donors
Laboratory-grown tissues for some organ repair applications
Drugs that enhance partial regeneration of damaged organs

Wild (speculative):

Complete spinal cord regeneration restoring full function
Restoration of natural-quality vision after complete blindness
Bioengineered full organs grown from patient's cells on demand
Limb regeneration in humans
Routine enhancement of regenerative capacity for wound healing and organ repair

The trajectory of repair medicine is one of expanding possibilities. Conditions that were permanent are becoming treatable. Losses that were irreversible are becoming reversible. Bodies that were broken are becoming repairable.

This is not quite science fiction, though some of the endpoints remain in the realm of speculation. The near-term is more modest than the hype suggests, but more hopeful than the pessimists assume. Progress is real. The question is whether it can reach the people who need it, and whether society is prepared for a world where the body's limits become more negotiable than they've ever been before.

Endnotes — Chapter 5

Global Burden of Disease Study estimates of spinal cord injury prevalence. Approximately 250,000-500,000 new injuries occur annually worldwide.
WHO estimates over 43 million people are blind and an additional 295 million have moderate to severe visual impairment globally.
WHO and national registries document that thousands die annually on organ transplant waiting lists. In the US, approximately 17 people die each day waiting for transplants.
Limb loss from diabetes, vascular disease, and trauma affects approximately 2 million people in the US alone, with 185,000 new amputations annually.
Epidural stimulation results have been published by groups at University of Louisville, UCLA, Mayo Clinic, and EPFL, demonstrating that some patients with motor complete spinal cord injury can achieve voluntary movement with stimulation.
Luxturna (voretigene neparvovec) was FDA approved in 2017 for RPE65-mediated inherited retinal dystrophy.
UNOS (United Network for Organ Sharing) data as of 2024 shows over 100,000 candidates on the national transplant waiting list.
UNOS data indicates approximately 6,000-8,000 people die annually while on the US transplant waiting list.
The University of Maryland transplanted a genetically modified pig heart into David Bennett in January 2022. NYU Langone and others have conducted pig kidney transplants in brain-dead patients.
Neuralink received FDA clearance for human trials in 2023 and has implanted its device in at least one human patient as of early 2024.
Synchron's Stentrode device has been implanted in multiple patients in Australia and the US for motor control applications.
EPFL brain-spine interface research published in Nature (2023) demonstrated restoration of walking in a patient with complete spinal cord injury using decoded brain signals to drive spinal stimulation.
Multiple published studies demonstrate that epidural stimulation can restore voluntary movement in some patients with complete spinal cord injury, though results vary significantly between individuals.
Nature publication (2023): "Walking naturally after spinal cord injury using a brain-spine interface."
Pre-clinical studies have demonstrated axon regeneration in animal models using chondroitinase ABC, anti-Nogo antibodies, and other approaches. Human translation has been limited.
Luxturna clinical trials showed significant improvements in functional vision in patients with RPE65 mutations, including ability to navigate obstacle courses in low light.
GenSight Biologics reported in Nature Medicine (2021) that a patient with retinitis pigmentosa achieved partial vision restoration using optogenetic therapy combined with engineered goggles.
Argus II (Second Sight) was FDA approved in 2013. Other devices including those from Pixium Vision have been in development. Resolution remains limited to dozens or hundreds of electrodes.
Orion cortical visual prosthesis has been tested in research settings with participants reporting phosphenes and basic shape perception.
David Bennett received a pig heart on January 7, 2022, and died on March 8, 2022. Post-mortem analysis revealed porcine cytomegalovirus infection was a contributing factor.
NYU Langone and other centers have maintained pig kidneys functioning in brain-dead patients for periods of weeks, demonstrating physiological function.
Decellularized organ scaffolds have been demonstrated in research settings for various tissues. Clinical translation remains challenging.
Research published in multiple journals has demonstrated that neonatal mouse hearts can regenerate, while adult hearts cannot. Understanding the developmental switch is an active area of investigation.