Sergio Canavero, head of the Russian head transplant project Valeria Spiridonova, and his colleagues presented the first results of experiments on the successful fusion of an injured spinal cord and on a primate head transplant without preserving mobility.
An international team of biologists led by Sergio Canavero has taken a big step towards transplanting a human head onto a donor body, successfully fusing a severed spinal cord in rats and testing some of the techniques in monkeys, according to a series of articles accepted for publication in the journals Surgery and CNS Neuroscience & Therapeutics.
At the end of February 2015, Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero announced the launch of an ambitious HEAVEN / AHBR project, in which he planned to transplant a volunteer's head onto a donor body by connecting the spinal cord to the brain using a special procedure he calls the GEMINI protocol.
Russian engineer Valery Spiridonov, confined to a wheelchair due to muscle dystrophy, responded to Canavero's call. The Russian suffers from Werdnig-Hoffmann syndrome, a serious genetic disease that gradually deprives a person of the ability to move.
Opinions of neurosurgeons regarding a possible operation were divided: some do not exclude such a possibility in principle, but are not sure of the success of the operation, others consider a head transplant an adventure that will inevitably end in failure.
Today, Canavero and his colleagues announced that they have successfully implemented the key stage of this operation - the fusion of the brain stem and spinal cord - in experiments on rats. To do this, the scientists used a special ultra-thin carbon nano-knife, an organic substance polyethylene glycol, which helps nerve fibers "stick" to each other, as well as a special method of stimulating the spinal cord at the site of the incision, which is necessary for the appearance of a connection between neurons.
According to scientists, about a month after the damage to the spine and its fusion according to the Canavero technique, the nerve fibers in the spine fused and the animals regained their limb mobility. All these operations were carried out in China, where there are no restrictions for such experiments.
In addition, scientists have successfully validated brain preservation techniques in total brain transplants in monkeys. In this case, limb mobility was not restored, but the animals remained alive and their brains were not irreversibly damaged when transplanted to a new body.
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Carrying out such experiments, as scientists explain, became possible in many respects thanks to the drug perftoran, which was developed at the Institute of Biological Physics of the USSR Academy of Sciences as an artificial blood substitute. This substance supplied the brain cells after it was separated from the body.
In addition to these experiments, scientists also presented a number of "preventive" measures - how to deal with the pain that occurs during transplantation, which, as Canavero emphasizes, his critics did not even suspect, and also presented a solution to a number of philosophical questions that arise with similar operations.
According to the authors of the publications, the first experiments on human bodies have already begun in China and soon the range of research will be significantly expanded. The first transplant, according to the researchers, will be carried out on schedule - in December 2017.