Partly paralyzed man prepares for clinical trial
Experimental treatment aims to ‘regrow the spinal cord’
After suffering a spinal cord injury at a local trampoline park early last year, a young Sherwood Park man is preparing to take the next step in his recovery.
Landon Smith, 20, has been accepted to participate in a clinical trial at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, which may ultimately help him to walk again.
He will be the first Canadian — and youngest candidate — to take part in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved trial, which is set to begin in early October.
“I’m very excited to be a part of this research,” Smith said Monday at the ReYu Paralysis Recovery Centre, where he has trained for more than one year to try to regain functionality.
“I really want to be that person to show people that no matter what you face in life, there’s always something you can do to change it and change that trajectory.”
Smith was at a birthday party when he did a front-flip into a foam pit and broke his neck at Jump Park Trampoline in Sherwood Park in January 2017.
The incident left him paralyzed from the chest down and he spent more than seven months at the University of Alberta Hospital and the Glenrose Rehabilitation Centre.
“I’ve been stripped of everything in my life — it’s quite a debilitating injury,” Smith said.
Despite that, however, he has managed to stay focused on his recovery.
“There was a lot of determination (involved),” he said.
“I was in the hospital bed for three weeks afterwards, searching up what I could do to change my life, and I think that mindset has really helped get me to this position.
“Without that mindset, I wouldn’t be going to Miami in three weeks, and I wouldn’t have the opportunity to hopefully change the spinal cord injury community.”
The clinical trial involves harvesting Schwann cells from a nerve in the back of Smith’s leg, which will take place on Oct. 22.
Then, following 12 weeks of rigorous training, as many as 200 million of those cells will be injected into the back of his neck, Smith said, in an attempt to “regrow the spinal cord and get some regenerating factors.”
“At this stage, it’s just an awesome opportunity to progress and speed up my recovery,” he said.
Aside from helping prepare her son, Smith’s mother, Brenda Smith, continues to lobby for changes to the way trampoline parks are regulated in Alberta and the rest of Canada.
“My frustration is that the government has not taken an active step,” she said.
She would like to see all trampoline parks follow the same standards, in terms of where they buy their equipment and how staff are trained.
“I want that to be standard, so that when anybody goes to a place like this, (they) know (they’re) going into a foam pit that is a certain depth, that has been tested, that meets safety standards, that there’s foam below it, that it’s standard. That is ideally what I want,” she said.
“I think there’s an assumption from the general public that when these places open that they have had to cover some kind of policy or that they’ve had to do something from a safety perspective, but that’s not case and it should be.”
Although the Miami Project covers the cost of housing for Smith, his medical care and living expenses are expected to cost about $100,000.
A GoFundMe page has been set up to help cover costs. So far, around $23,000 of the $100,000 goal has been raised.
The Smith family will be hosting a fundraising dinner and silent auction at the Clarion Hotel near Millennium Place in Sherwood Park on Sept. 22.
Tickets are $100 and can be purchased at landonsmith.com/ events.