Trying to restore bodily functions after spinal cord injuries

Anderson Cooper: This week on 60 Minutes, we're doing a story about efforts to help people who are paralyzed with severe spinal cord injuries develop the ability to walk again. And not just walk again, but actually walk using their thoughts to control the movement of their limbs.

Anderson Cooper: A French neuroscientist, Gregoire Courtine, and a Swiss neurosurgeon, Dr. Jocelyne Bloch, have been working together in their lab called NeuroRestore in Lausanne, Switzerland. And they have developed something they call a digital bridge. 

Dave Marver: So, if you have an injury, the communication between the brain and the spinal cord that controls movement and other functions, it's interrupted. 

Anderson Cooper: Dave Marver is the CEO of Onward Medical, which is a company that Dr. Bloch and Gregoire Courtine have formed to get this technology out of the lab, and into the marketplace 

Dave Marver: So, a digital bridge actually circumvents that injury. It sends signals wirelessly from the brain to the intact, healthy part of the spinal cord on the other side of the injury to enable a person to move or have other critical functions.

Anderson Cooper: I think if you haven't experienced paralysis, you may think wanting to walk again, that's the number one thing. There's a whole range of issues which are really difficult for somebody who is paralyzed. 

Dave Marver: I think the public views walking again, as the top priority. It's well down the list. They want to go to the bathroom without inserting a catheter. They want sexual function back. They want to normalize their blood pressure, their body temperature. These are things that impact them every day for hours of every day. Blood pressure regulation's a big problem. So, what happens is, after a spinal cord injury, people often have very low blood pressure. It means that it's difficult for them to sit upright like this and have a conversation or have a meal with loved ones and friends without feeling faint. It can also take them an hour to just transition from bed to chair in the morning because they're continually feeling light-headed and faint. 

Jocelyne Bloch: To regulate the blood pressure, you need your nervous system, too, that is also going through the spinal cord. 

Gregoire Courtine: With the spinal cord stimulation, there is a very specific region of the spinal cord that we can target with the stimulation that is normally elevating blood pressure. So, we adapted our system to stimulate this region, and we are able to alleviate this hypotensive complication due to a spinal cord injury. And we are playing on the same principle for the improvement of the bladder function, which is a big problem for people with a spinal cord injury. 

Anderson Cooper: Spinal cord stimulators may show some promise in helping people with Parkinson's Disease. It's still very early clinical trials. But it's helping people regain a certain amount of mobility, which for people in later stages of Parkinson's can be a huge issue.

Gregoire Courtine: In the case of people with Parkinson's disease, the brain sends crumbled signals, although the spinal cord is fully intact. So we thought, "Can we not use the same principle to activate the spinal cord, and this way regulate walking?" And it was absolutely incredible. The first observation, it's, like, you turn on the stimulation because the spinal cord's intact. The patient, with the stimulation, was walking almost normally. 

Anderson Cooper: Is that with the implant in the brain, or just the stimulation? 

Gregoire Courtine: In this case, it was only with the spinal cord stimulation. 

Anderson Cooper: I just want to make sure people know that there's a long way to go before something like this could be more widely accessible. But that is certainly the hope for Bloch and Courtine.

Jocelyne Bloch: That would be success. Having the possibility to apply the therapy to many patients would be very nice. 

Gregoire Courtine: The hurdle now is primarily executing a clinical trial to show safety and efficacy, get approval by the FDA and the European Union and make sure that the therapy's not too complicated so that other centers can apply it to their patient. 

Jocelyne Bloch: The ideal world is simplicity. It should be very easy for any patient to use the therapy. 

Anderson Cooper: In an ideal scenario, what does this look like ten years from now? 

Dave Marver: What I'd like is for somebody with a spinal cord injury to be able to engage in a conversation or discussion with their doctor and identify what they want to see fixed or recovered. To be able to almost [have] a menu. "I want to restore my hand function. I want to normalize my blood pressure. I want to address my incontinence or sexual function." And our therapies will offer the opportunity to fix every one of those things. That's our vision. 

The video above was produced by Brit McCandless Farmer and edited by Scott Rosann.