Pigs with severed spinal cords regained the ability to walk after “fusogenic” therapyMichael Lebenstein-Gumovski et al. 2026
More than 15 million people live with a spinal cord injury. With so few effective treatments, my interest was well and truly piqued when I saw a recent paper reporting that a new intervention had allowed pigs with completely severed spinal cords to walk again.
The feat was performed by a team led by Michael Lebenstein-Gumovski at the Sklifosovsky Institute for Emergency Medicine in Russia. The paper also has editorial contributions from neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero, who you might remember claimed in 2015 that human head transplants were just two years away. With his involvement, and with Russia due to add the spinal cord to its authorised list of transplantable tissues this year, colour me intrigued.
But what did Lebenstein-Gumovski and his team actually do? First, they anaesthetised the animals and removed the bony arch surrounding the pigs’ spinal cord, cooled the area and then sliced through the spinal cord with a sharp blade in the mid-back region. This severed the connection between the brain and the body below the abdomen – replicating one of the most severe forms of spinal cord injury.
