Many experts argue that these therapies, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars, have not been adequately tested. "There are no controls, no well-defined protocol for post-procedure follow-up," says James Guest, a neurosurgeon and spinal cord researcher with The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis. Guest previously visited Huang's hospital and last month co-authored a critique of the treatment for a scientific journal. "There is relatively little data on what the implants are, what the complications are, or what the outcomes are," he says.

According to Young, who trained Huang when he was a post-doctoral student at Rutgers University, beginning in the late 1990s, this lack of follow-up is symptomatic of the medical culture in China. "Part of the problem in China is there is no system for follow-up," says Young. "When a patient leaves the hospital, [the hospital] doesn't have the resources to get the patient to come back."

Young aims to change this practice with his clinical trial network, which now has 17 participating centers in the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong, and plans to begin its first clinical trial in June.

The network has sponsored training sessions for the Chinese doctors involved in the trials, in which U.S. experts taught standardized procedures for assessment of spinal cord injury. "Outcome measure is always the most important thing," says Johan Karlberg, director of the Clinical Trials Centre at the University of Hong Kong, which has extensive experience conducting clinical trials and will oversee the network's projects.

In September researchers plan to start a placebo-controlled trial of lithium, which has been shown to boost cell growth and survival in animal models. The next step, if they get permission, will be a trial of stem cells derived from umbilical cord blood transplanted into 300 patients with chronic spinal cord injury. Young says the goal is to register the trials in both China and the United States.

"With this first trial, we want to establish proof of concept that we can take a therapy from the preclinical phase to [late-stage clinical trials] in two years -- which is very fast -- and do it cheaper, faster, and better than anyone else," says Young. "My hope is that once we establish this concept, a company with a promising therapy can come in and get a definitive answer in two years...for $20 million or less." (Young estimates that the network can run trials for about $20,000 per patient for surgery and hospitalization, compared with around $100,000 for a similar U.S. trial.)

"This network has more capacity than any other network in the world," says Young. "We could test 6,000 patients a year if we wanted to." However, capacity will also depend on funding, he says. The network so far relies largely on fundraising and still must raise a significant amount of money to pay for its first round of trials.