The Red Bulletin April 2020

Wings for Life
“Unlike most government institutions,
we can fund highly original
projects and think outside the box”
Dr Verena May, Wings for Life
railway near Colorado Springs – with a mate holding his
legs. “I just want to surprise people and show what you can
do with a positive mindset.”
Nathalie McGloin was just 16 when, as a passenger in
a car crash, she broke the C6-C7 vertebrae in her neck,
leaving her paralysed from the waist down. She is now
the world’s only female quadriplegic racing driver,
piloting an adapted, hand-controlled Cayman S in the
Porsche Club Championship. “The adrenalin is part of the
appeal, but I also get to race alongside able-bodied people,”
she says. “I’d never had that parity since my injury. But all
that matters here is your skill and bravery.”
During her traumatic time in hospital, McGloin focused on
“surviving each day” and “just dealing with being a teenager
while coping with my new ‘broken body’”. Some days, she
wanted to die. But now the Northampton racer talks excitedly
about her first win at Silverstone – “I’d never taken the flag,
so I didn’t know what to do” – the joy of racing in the rain,
and hitting that perfect sweet spot between speed and
control: “I call it ‘driving on the edge’.”
Arriving at our photoshoot, these three pioneers share a
natural athletic presence: Jackson is tall and chiselled with
a military bearing; Tansley has a tanned, muscular torso; and
McGloin radiates the sparkle of a self-confessed “adrenalin
junkie”. She talks about the thrill of testing rally cars. Jackson
discusses his new ‘Walk The Spine’ challenge – a 431km hike
along the Pennine Way, over the ‘backbone’ of England. And
Tansley, who can now take tentative steps with crutches, is
happy to do wheelchair pull-ups for the camera.
Together, they’ve demonstrated how people with SCIs
can enjoy extraordinary new experiences. But what if a lifechanging
cure could be found? Could outliers like Jackson
become the new normal? Only 75 years ago, those lucky
enough to survive an SCI would succumb to fatal infections or
complications. But although medical advances have extended
life expectancy, until recently a cure was deemed impossible.
One reason for this pessimism was biological. The spinal
cord contains a billion nerve cells (neurons) with ear-like
dendrites and tongue-like axons that ‘listen’ and ‘talk’ to
each other, constantly firing signals between your brain and
your body. They control movement, but also regulate your
temperature, blood pressure, and bladder, bowel and sexual
functions. But whereas most cells regenerate naturally,
neurons in your spine do not, suggesting the rampant cell
death triggered by an SCI must be irreversible.
The other reason was financial. SCIs represent a tiny
market for drug companies and medical bodies in comparison
with the rewards of curing more widespread issues such as
cancer. As a result, funding has been low and hope even
lower. A shocking 1994 survey found that only 18 per cent of
medics would be glad to be alive with a severe SCI, compared
with 92 per cent of people actually living with one.
But progress was made through the activism of Christopher
Reeve – the Superman actor who became quadriplegic after
falling from a horse in 1995. Along with his wife, he launched
the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation to fund innovative
research. Critics branded him a pedlar of false hopes, and
some claimed talk of a ‘cure’ undermined injured people’s
struggles to accept reality. But Reeve’s hope was founded in
fact. Back in 1981, Canadian neurologist Dr Albert Aguayo
and neuroscientist Dr Sam David had discovered that by
transferring the leg nerves of paralysed rats into the animals’
spinal cords, axons began to regrow. Human application was
a distant dream, but the dogma-shattering revelation that
axons could regenerate gave Reeve hope. Although he died in
2004, his charity has now funded $136m (£105m) of research.
Today’s game-changing research is still driven by grassroots
campaigns. Wings for Life is a non-profit SCI research
foundation set up in 2004 by Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz
and his friend, former motocross champion Heinz Kinigadner,
whose son Hannes was paralysed in a motocross accident in
2003. It has already funded 211 research projects in 19
countries. Events such as the Wings for Life World Run, which
takes place on May 3 (see page 67), help to fund its work.
“To find a cure for spinal cord injury is one of the last
huge riddles in medical research, but everyone is now
certain that the goal can be achieved,” insists CEO Anita
Gerhardter. “The question is not if, but when.” Scientific
Coordinator Dr Verena May agrees: “Those who research
such a complex area know it’s not easy, but you can feel that
determination now.”
But what does a ‘cure’ actually mean? “Foremost, we are
looking for an actual biological cure,” says Gerhardter.
“But the way to get to that cure is to restore functions
like arm movement or bowel and bladder function. It
is about much more than being able to walk.”
Some Wings for Life researchers are working to restore
movement. Professor Grégoire Courtine of the Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology Lausanne and Professor Jocelyne
Bloch at the Lausanne University Hospital are conducting a
clinical trial, ‘Stimulation Movement Overground’ (STIMO),
which combines two treatments: precise epidural electrical
stimulation of the spinal cord and intensive robot-assisted
movement training. The former places an electrode over the
‘dura’, or protective coating, of the spine during rehabilitation
to stimulate dormant neurons, enabling subjects to voluntarily
flex their legs. The latter is a robotic system supporting their
bodyweight as they move. Within a week, participants began
to walk around the room with the support, and eventually
cover 1km on a treadmill, even though some had shown
64 THE RED BULLETIN