Dr Giles Plant

Dr Giles Plant is an NH&MRC 'RD Wright Fellow' and Director of Red's Spinal Cord Research Laboratory housed in the School of Anatomy & Human Biology, University of WA. He is a Senior lecturer, founding Chief co-ordinator for the Tissue Engineering Research Centre (TERC) and is on the scientific advisory Board of the Spinal Cord Society of Australia.

Dr Giles Plant completed his PhD at The University of Western Australia (UWA). He travelled to the United States in 1996 to join the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, where he was among the first of two groups to transplant adult olfactory ensheathing glia (OEG) into the injured spinal cord.

Returning to Perth in 1999, Dr Plant began working with Professor Alan Harvey and other members of the NRP team, building on science's current understanding of OEG and Schwann cells, the use of gene therapy, bone marrow cell transplantation and other techniques, such as training, to promote regeneration and recovery following spinal cord injury.

Dr Plant has been a contributing member of the American Paralysis Association research consortium into spinal cord repair and in recent years has been involved with national and international efforts to optimise global cooperation and standardisation of protocols to ensure the safe and effective conduct of clinical trials in the field of spinal cord injury (for example the International Campaign for Curing Paralysis, and he is a steering committee member for SCIN, the Spinal Cord Injury Network (Australia, New Zealand)).

Dr Plant is involved in several NRP projects, investigating the role of olfactory ensheathing glia, as well as testing human stromal cell (bone marrow) transplant therapy and anti-scarring agents in various models of spinal cord injury.

Current NRP (Chief) Co-investigators:
Prof Alan Harvey, Dr Stuart Hodgetts, UWA
Dr Paul Simmons, St. Vincents Hospital, Victoria
Dr Phil Horner, Washington USA
Dr Drew Sellers, Washington USA