Revolutionary New Treatment For Spinal Cord Injuries
O'BRIEN: Friday, Paula Zahn spends an hour with Christopher Reeve. It is his first full interview without a ventilator. Reeve is on a quest to walk again, more than eight years after a horse-riding accident that paralyzed him. He recently traveled to Israel, where pioneering research on spinal cord injuries is being conducted, research that has won Food and Drug Administration approval for clinical trials to begin in the United States. As CNN's Sheila MacVicar reports, the treatment offers new hope.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There, did you get that on the foot?</s>SHEILA MACVICAR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): There have been 16 patients so far. And Melissa Holly, an 18-year-old from Colorado, was the first.</s>MELISSA HOLLY, CLINICAL TRIAL PATIENT: I had no feeling. I had no movement and was basically told that a type of injury that I had, a doctor had not seen it recover.</s>MACVICAR: Within days of being paralyzed in a car accident, Holly was flown to Israel for a revolutionary treatment, a treatment which has helped her spinal cord begin to regenerate, something never seen before. Now she can feel her body and has some movement.</s>HOLLY: It's just the little things, the feeling, being able to feel when I touch my knee or when someone tries to get my attention. That, to me, is a huge blessing.</s>MACVICAR: Professor Michal Schwartz, an Israeli neuroimmunologist, pioneered Holly's therapy, winning praise from Christopher Reeve. Even she was astonished by what happened to Holly.</s>SCHWARTZ: When we learned, one month after she was treated, that she is recovering, the sensation, I was shocked to death, really shocked.</s>MACVICAR: Professor Schwartz theorized, the human immune system, our blood cells, might be able to help the central nervous system and the spinal cord recover, a theory that defied medical teaching.</s>SCHWARTZ: The dogma was that immune cells should not be in the brain or the spinal cord.</s>MACVICAR: Her revolutionary idea was to use a patient's own white blood cells, from them extract cells called microphages, incubate them with peripheral cells from the skin which can regenerate, and create a single patient-customized injection. Neurosurgeon Nachshon Knoller has performed the trials in Israel. No one has been made worse. Most some showed some benefits. And, for three, the results were remarkable.</s>DR. NACHSHON KNOLLER, NEUROSURGEON: One was a quadriplegic. He had a cervical injury. And now he can step or stand on his toes.</s>SCHWARTZ: It doesn't mean to say that I'm sure that it's tomorrow where all the spinal cord injury patients will recover. But I'm sure about the concept.</s>MACVICAR: And because Professor Schwartz is sure, because there are more clinical trials about to start, because more researchers and doctors are following her work, there is more hope for more patients like Melissa Holly. Sheila MacVicar, CNN, Rehovot, Israel.</s>O'BRIEN: Friday on "PAULA ZAHN NOW," an hour with Christopher Reeve, his first entire interview without the use of a ventilator. Here's a preview.</s>PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: How have you worked through the dark days, when you've really had to confront the sense of loss in your life?</s>CHRISTOPHER REEVE, ACTOR: Well, fortunately, those days are long behind me. And you know what? I still -- and this is 8 1/2 years post-injury -- never once had a dream in which I'm disabled.</s>ZAHN: What do you dream about?</s>REEVE: I don't know. This is a family show, right?</s>ZAHN: I think -- well, we're in prime time.</s>REEVE: We're on at 8:00. The kids are still up.</s>ZAHN: Yes. We're on the edge there.</s>REEVE: I dream about all the things that normal, healthy 51- year-old American males dream about.</s>O'BRIEN: You can see Paula Zahn's hour with Christopher Reeve on Friday at 8:00 p.m. Eastern. Can Michael Jackson's career be saved? We're going to ask his former publicist and the star-marker who launched the careers of the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync. Also, competition for interviews with Jackson and other celebrities in trouble is fierce, so fierce you can even bet on who will get the big get. We'll tell you about that. And tomorrow, spend Thanksgiving evening with Paula Zahn and the internationally renowned Sejong Soloists.