The following article by Sue Corrigan appeared in The Mail On Sunday on 25 November 2008.

He has already made a paralysed rat walk and he’s hoping to do the same with humans … thanks to the help of Britain ’s celebrity chefs, Sue Corrigan reveals how ‘maverick professor’ Geoffrey Raisman is on the brink of a world-beating discovery - and why a chef is his biggest champion

Daniel Nicholls was a strapping 19-year-old enjoying a gap-year trip to Australia when he dived into shallow water on a Sydney beach four years ago and hit a sandbank. Like the Superman actor Christopher Reeve, who broke his neck when thrown from a horse, Daniel was left almost completely paralysed.

At first, Daniel’s father, David Nicholls, was in shock. But days later, looking at his son lying helpless in a hospital bed, he resolved to do whatever he could to see Daniel walk again.

It would mean pumping millions of pounds into research. But as a Michelin-starred chef, he was able to call upon some of the biggest names in his business to help.

Forty-eight chefs, including Gordon Ramsay, Nigella Lawson, Jamie Oliver, Rick Stein and Delia Smith agreed to contribute their favourite recipes to a unique cook book, Off Duty, which went on to become a bestseller. Then, two years ago, Nicholls set out to find the best scientists in the world who could help Daniel, and others like him, to get back on their feet.

‘I investigated the work of leading researchers in America , Germany , China and Korea ,’ Nicholls said. ‘I contacted experts in this field all over the world, and the name that kept coming up was that of a neurology researcher based in a London hospital, just a few miles away from where I work.

‘The more I talked to Professor Geoffrey Raisman about his work and the more I learned about what other experts in this field think, the more convinced I became that he is the scientist to back. I am convinced that, sooner or later, this man is going to do something amazing.’ In his cramped corner office at University College London’s worldrenowned Institute of Neurology, Professor Raisman and his team are tantalisingly close to achieving one of the great breakthroughs in medical history - finding a way of repairing the spinal and central nervous system damage that now leaves millions of people paralysed, or blind, deaf or in constant pain.

The professor’s treatment has already produced incredible results in laboratory rats. Animals that were not able to move because of damaged spinal cords can now run around. Human trials are due to begin within a year or so, involving up to 15 patients.

‘We will be trying to do something that has never been done before, and succeeding at it is the only way we are ever going to win over the many sceptics who still insist this sort of regeneration is impossible,’ Professor Raisman said.

A self-professed ‘maverick’, he points out he has spent his working life challenging the medical orthodoxy - and proving it wrong.

‘When I first started working in this area, at Oxford University in the late Sixties, virtually the entire medical and scientific profession believed it was impossible for any damaged wiring in the brain or central nervous system to form new connections of the body’s own accord,’ he said.

‘I was the first, in 1969, to provide evidence that new connections can and do, in fact, form in cases where there has been damage to the brain or nervous system.

‘There was enormous resistance at the time to this idea of mine, which I called “plasticity”.

Today, it is standard thinking. Our brains are continuously in a state of change at the cellular level. And that is not only medically important, but central to the very idea of humanity. The ability of our brains to change and adapt is what has created society, and in this ability lies the only hope for our future.’ According to the professor, his six-member Spinal Repair Unit is significantly ahead of similar research units anywhere else in the world - including the highpowered American foundation for which Christopher Reeve raised tens of millions of dollars before his death three years ago.

Researchers in many countries are working on a range of possible treatments for spinal and nerve injury, including electrical stimulation, drugs designed to promote nerve regeneration and the injection of embryonic stem cells. The London team, by contrast, are pinning their hopes on adult stem cells located within the upper lining of the nose. First identified by Professor Raisman 20 years ago, these stem cells are in the only area of the body where nerve fibres are able to regenerate themselves.

Unlike embryonic stem cells, the use of a patient’s own nasal cells means there is no risk of immune-system rejection.

Neither are there any of the ethical controversies that continue to surround the use of embryos for medical experimentation and treatment.

In fact, Professor Raisman is profoundly sceptical about the potential for using embryonic stem cells, pointing out that for all the hype, no one is ‘anywhere near’ working out how to actually turn these cells into particular types of tissue or nerves.

By contrast, his method involves taking nasal nerve cells from patients, multiplying them in a laboratory and then injecting them into the spinal cord or severed nerves. Here they will, it is hoped, create a connecting ‘bridge’, enabling severed nerve fibres to regrow.

With the help of this bridge, Professor Raisman believes, the nervous system’s own ability to form new connections will then be able to kick in.

‘We have shown in rats that regenerating just one per cent of severed connections is enough to ensure a major return of normal function,’ he said.

‘Using our one per cent, the body itself then takes over and does the rest. We are only helping a natural process.

‘Some 42 per cent of severe spinal injuries already repair themselves naturally within 12 months.

‘This enables various doctors or therapists to claim they have effected “miracle” cures, whereas it is the body itself that has done all the work, not them.

‘The only way to prove you have, in fact, made a major medical advance is to work on paralysed people who haven’t recovered after a year, and who have been told they have no chance of recovery.

‘And that is what we plan to do.

I believe we will, one day sooner or later, get there.’ The first human trial is due to take place at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, West London , possibly before the end of next year, involving patients with nerve root damage to their shoulders. This particular type of injury, often caused by motorbike accidents, never recovers of its own accord, leaving patients with chronic pain and limited arm movement.

Given the catastrophic effects of spinal injury, the huge cost of long-term care and more than two million paralysed people around the world waiting desperately for a cure to be found, it might be thought the Government would be throwing money at Professor Raisman to support his work.

But no - he and his team are constantly struggling for funds, and are supported by private research and charitable foundations.

‘I have to spend almost my entire time either on raising the money necessary to continue our work, or battling with bureaucratic red tape,’ he said, with some irritation.

‘Fortunately, I have two brilliant Chinese-born researchers on my team who get on with the hands-on scientific work. I try to protect them while I wade through all the bureaucracy. It’s like swimming through mud.

‘If it weren’t for the magnificent support we have been given by University College London and the National Hospital over the past two years, it’s entirely possible that we would have been forced by now to continue this work overseas, if not abandon it altogether.’ Indeed, leading institutes in Germany and America have offered Professor Raisman millions of dollars in grants, and access to state-of-the-art facilities, to transfer his work there.

But for all the difficulties he faces here, the 68-year-old Yorkshire-born scientist says he prefers to stay in the country that gave his Lithuanian Jewish forebears sanctuary 150 years ago.

‘This is my culture, I’m most comfortable here,’ he said. ‘My office is next door to the hospital where neurology as a medical discipline was invented,for goodness’ sake, more than 200 years ago at the time of King George III and his madness. I wouldn’t be good at other countries’ systems. I’m not so good at this country’s, but I have survived in it.’ Caring night and day for his paralysed son, David Nicholls was horrified when he discovered how hampered Professor Raisman’s team were by lack of money. ‘It’s absolutely ludicrous that Geoffrey doesn’t get more financial support from the Government and its research-funding bodies, such as the Medical Research Council,’ Nicholls said. ‘Developing techniques to repair spinal injuries would save the NHS hundreds of millions of pounds, quite apart from the suffering that would be alleviated.’ But Nicholls, who is executive chef at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in London, didn’t just gripe about the situation - instead, he established a charity, the Nicholls Spinal Injury Foundation, which over the past two years has raised more than £1million for Professor Raisman’s team - a third of its total funding.

Much of that money has been raised by the cookery book Off Duty, which has sold more than 70,000 copies.

Future fundraising events include a celebrity golf tournament and dinners prepared by many of the most famous names in British cooking.

All of it, said Nicholls, goes directly to Professor Raisman. ‘Daniel doesn’t get a peanut from the money I raise. All he gets is what every other person paralysed by spinal injury gets - and that is hope. My vision is completely on the future. I will get Dan on his feet. I will do everything humanly possible.

‘If I have to raise £5 million or £10 million, I will do it. It would be unforgivably cruel to give Daniel or anyone else in this situation false hope. But I am now convinced that a cure for paralysing spinal injury is not a question of if any longer, but when.’

For more information on the Nicholls Spinal Injury Foundation and future fundraising events, call 01933 664437.