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Saudi Taekwondo Champion Dunya AbuTaleb Soars to Fourth in World Rankings

File photo of Saudi Arabia's flag.
File photo of Saudi Arabia's flag.
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Saudi Taekwondo Champion Dunya AbuTaleb Soars to Fourth in World Rankings

File photo of Saudi Arabia's flag.
File photo of Saudi Arabia's flag.

Dunya AbuTaleb, the Saudi taekwondo champion, continues to shine on the global stage as she has secured the fourth place in the international rankings for the -53 kg weight category for June, a historic achievement for any Saudi athlete in the sport's history, SPA reported.
AbuTaleb, already the first Saudi woman to qualify for the Paris 2024 Olympics, has her sights set even higher. With her recent Asian Championship gold medal (another first for Saudi women's taekwondo), she's considered a strong contender for the World Championship bronze medal.
Meanwhile, on the men's side, Riyad Hamdi, a member of the Saudi Taekwondo national team, has also made significant strides. Thanks to his impressive international and continental victories, including the 2024 Asian Championship gold medal, he is now ranked among the top 10 players globally in the -54 kg weight category.

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Stem Cell Treatment Helped Improve Spinal Cord Injuries, Say Japan Scientists

A scientific researcher extracts the RNA from embryonic stem cells in a laboratory. (AFP/Getty Images)
A scientific researcher extracts the RNA from embryonic stem cells in a laboratory. (AFP/Getty Images)
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Stem Cell Treatment Helped Improve Spinal Cord Injuries, Say Japan Scientists

A scientific researcher extracts the RNA from embryonic stem cells in a laboratory. (AFP/Getty Images)
A scientific researcher extracts the RNA from embryonic stem cells in a laboratory. (AFP/Getty Images)

A stem cell treatment helped improve the motor function of two out of four patients with a spinal cord injury in the first clinical study of its kind, Japanese scientists said.

There is currently no effective treatment for paralysis caused by serious spinal cord injuries, which affect more than 150,000 patients in Japan alone, with 5,000 new cases each year.

Researchers at Tokyo's Keio University are conducting their study using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) -- created by stimulating mature, already specialized, cells back into a juvenile state.

They can then be prompted to mature into different kinds of cells, with the Keio researchers using iPS-derived cells of the neural stem.

The university said on Friday that the motor function score for two patients improved after an operation to implant more than two million iPS-derived cells into a spinal cord.

No serious adverse event was observed for all four cases after a year of monitoring, the university said.

The research's main goal was to study the safety of injecting the cells.

Public broadcaster NHK reported that one of the two was an elderly man who suffered the injury in an accident.

He is now able to stand without support and has started practicing walking, NHK said.

"We were able to achieve results in the world's first spinal cord treatment with iPS," Hideyuki Okano, a Keio professor who heads the research, said, according to NHK.

Okano said the team hoped to move to a clinical trial that would be a step towards bringing the treatment to patients.

The university received government approval for their initial study in 2019 and they carried out the first operation in 2022.

Details of the patients remain confidential, but the team is focusing on people who were injured 14-28 days before the operation.

The number of cells implanted was determined after safety experiments in animals.