The Live Wire

Who we are

The International Spinal Research Trust, known as Spinal Research, was set up in 1980 by a young man called Stewart Yesner. Stewart, a barrister by profession, was involved in a car crash which left him paralysed. At the time, little research into spinal cord injury was occurring in the UK but Stewart believed that there was hope. He refused to accept the medical opinion of the day that paralysis had to be permanent.

So he set up the charity and others agreed with him – that paralysis shouldn’t mean your independence is taken away from you. In his first year, Stewart raised some £300,000 – and the charity has grown from these humble beginnings, achieving a £2m income in 2008-09.

We are now the UK’s major charity dedicated to developing reliable treatments for spinal cord injury. Since it was founded in 1980, it has funded internationally recognised, pioneering research and we will soon be able to offer very real hope for those who are paralysed.

We are a founder member of the International Campaign for Cures of Spinal Cord Injury Paralysis, the ICCP. This is a global grouping of the major charities working for spinal cord repair that develop strategies, regularly disseminates results and exchanges information to avoid duplication of research.

We are also a member of the Association of Medical Research Charities – the AMRC – and all projects that we fund are peer-reviewed by our eminent Scientific Committee before being approved and funded.

Since they started in 1999, Spinal Research’s annual research network meetings have developed into an important and popular event on the scientific calendar. Meetings generally are UK based but in 2007, we co-hosted a meeting in Switzerland, alongside the International Research Institute for Paraplegiology (IFP) and the Christopher & Dana Reeve Paralysis Foundation (CRPF). Our latest research network meeting was held in Glasgow in September 2009.

We have spent £20m on research, funding some 150 pioneering research projects across the world.

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