Chennai (PTI): Doctors at a hospital here have claimed they successfully used stem cell therapy to enable a 25-year-old man, who injured his spinal cord in a fall in July last year, to walk normally again.

This is the first time that Indian doctors have resorted to stem cell therapy to cure spinal cord problems, said J S Rajkumar, chief surgeon of the corporate Lifeline multi-speciality hospital.

Akbar Ali, who was employed by a construction company in Abu Dhabi, was injured when he fell from the fourth floor of a building.

When he was admitted to a hospital in Abu Dhabi, a plate was fitted to treat his spinal fracture, but he could not stand up on his own.

Ali was brought here by his parents in a wheelchair and admitted to the Lifeline Hospital here.

Its doctors, in collaboration with the Indo-Japanese joint venture Nichi In Centre For Regenerative Medicine (NCRA), used autologous or "own body" stem therapy in December 2006 to treat Ali who started walking on his own, Rajkumar told reporters Saturday.

Explaining the procedure, he said 100 ml of bone marrow fluid was collected from the hip bone. Stem cells were isolated and processed in NCRA using technological knowhow provided by Terunuma Hiroshi, a doctor of Tokyo's Biotherapy Institute.

Twenty-ml of the processed concentrate was injected into Ali's spinal fluid, which helped him recover, he said.