stem therapy

we have some remarkable video to show you tonight. stroke victims.. making incredible progress... literally overnight. thanks to a new kind of treatment at stanford. emily turner is here with a story you'll see only on five. it was a small clinical trial at

stanford, that involved an experimental treatment with special stem cells. the doctors are stunned and the patients - overjoyed. five years ago, sonia coontz suffered a stroke - that severely damaged her brain, this is sonia's stroke

it partially paralyzed sonia on her right side, and she could barely speak. "her speech was not very understandable she couldn't order food or communicate well" two years later, sonia could still hardly lift her arm. but just one day after an

experimental treatment - - "oh my gosh " sonia could lift her arm over her head- (pause) and move it to the side -(pause) and als0 to the front. and her words began to flow "i woke up and immediately i could speak better "

"she's what we call one of our miracle patients. doctor gary steinberg, chair of neurosurgery at stanford, led the small clinical trial. eighteen chronic stroke patients were involved. twelve came to stanford - - including sonia "i was very excited i think i

started to cry" . in the trial, steinberg drilled a tiny hole into the patient's skull and using a very fine needle, injected modified human adult stem cells around the stroke. we put them around the stroke and that where they do their

thing to recover the function. these stem cells are created by "san bio" - a biotech company located in mountain view. it's very exciting scientists here derived them from the bone marrow of two adult donors, and then tweaked them. these cells don't survive

for long after transplantation. but they appear to trigger a patient's damaged brain to begin to heal itself. "we think that transplanting the stem cells is jumpstarting the circutis. " here's another stroke patient just before surgery.. and here

she is just days after receiving the stem cell treatment. as for sonia, her life is back on track. she's now married and pregnant with her first child "it's a boy yeah.. (laughs)" not all of the patients, but most of them in the study saw a

of them in the study saw a benefit that has lasted. but steinberg is cautious and wants to replicate these findings in a much larger trial. that study is now enrolling participants. these results were published this afternoon in the journal,

stroke. for more information, go to kpix dot com