Cerebral palsy is a disorder in which damage to an immature brain before birth, during delivery, or right after birth causes abnormalities in motor function. Muscles weaken and the body cannot be controlled. For a long time, people thought a damaged brain could never be revived. Kim Min-young (59), a professor of rehabilitation medicine at Bundang Cha Hospital, CHA University, in 2013 became the first in the world to successfully treat cerebral palsy by injecting stem cells found in cord blood (umbilical cord blood).

Stem cells are a kind of primitive cell that can grow into various human cells. If stem cells are injected into tissue damaged by disease, there is a possibility they will be replaced with healthy cells. In particular, Kim treated patients with cord blood stem cells from other people. This opened the door to treating patients who did not store their own cord blood at birth, as long as immune compatibility is confirmed.

So far, Kim has administered cord blood treatment to more than 600 patients with cerebral palsy strictly as clinical research at the medical research level, not as a formal therapy. It is by far the highest treatment figure in the world. Babies who could not even hold themselves up received cord blood injections and crawled and sat on their own. As motor and sensory neurons in the brain regenerated, not only motor skills but also cognitive abilities improved.

Recently, following cerebral palsy, there have been treatment outcomes in stroke, autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and dementia. Kim tried various methods to restore brain function. In addition to cell therapy such as cord blood, the team mobilized transcranial magnetic stimulation that stimulates brain nerves with magnetic fields, and Virtual Reality (VR) digital therapy. Kim said, "If we can treat patients, the boundaries of technology are meaningless," adding, "Meeting patients every day and thinking about how to treat them led me to find various methods."

Professor Kim Min-young says, "We have seen therapeutic benefits by injecting umbilical cord blood stem cells to treat cerebral palsy, stroke, and autism patients," adding, "It is the result of neural regeneration and suppressed inflammation." /Courtesy of Reporter Jeon Gi-byeong

◇ "A damaged brain can also change"

– People think rehabilitation means building muscle, but you protected and activated neurons with cord blood.

"It was believed that once the brain was damaged, it could never be repaired, but in the late 1990s the theory of brain plasticity emerged, which said neural circuits can change. Now rehabilitation is not simply building muscle; it is the process of using the brain's plasticity to regain lost functions."

– What is the principle of plasticity that revives brain function?

"First, repetitive stimulation or training increases the synaptic connections of neurons. There are also changes in the brain's network. A patient with poor memory may not answer properly if you ask only verbally about a particular experience, but if you play the music heard at the time, show the person who was there, or the scenery seen together, the memory can be recalled more easily. Third is the neural function recovery effect of stem cells."

– What is the most effective means to restore brain function?

"In patients with cerebral palsy, combination therapy with cord blood cells and erythropoietic factors worked better, but cord blood cells alone also produced therapeutic effects. Continued research showed that the improvement in motor function from cord blood therapy was due to an increase in innate immune responses and anti-inflammatory effects. The principle of treatment is precisely to suppress inflammation."

– We heard you are also focusing on controlling inflammation in treating other brain diseases.

"The more we researched, the more we found a common cause among cerebral palsy, stroke, dementia, and autism. It is inflammation in the brain. When brain nerves are damaged, chronic inflammation develops around them and hinders neural regeneration. If this is suppressed, other brain diseases can also be treated. The prevalence of cerebral palsy is only 0.2% to 0.3%, but autism spectrum disorder is reported as high as 3%. Some of the children receiving rehabilitation treatment had autism, which led us to conduct clinical research."

Kim Min-young, professor of rehabilitation medicine at CHA University's CHA Bundang Medical Center, administers an intravenous infusion of allogeneic (donor) cord blood to a child with cerebral palsy. /Courtesy of CHA Hospital

◇ A medical student who went to the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute

– You are a medical school professor, but your three-year stint at the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) stands out. That is very unusual for a physician.

"From 2000 to 2003, I worked at ETRI as an invited researcher on the VR interface research team. At the time, few medical school professors were women. I decided to become a researcher rather than a professor, learned programming languages in my master's program with help from Professor Kim Jae-hee in the Department of Electronic Engineering at Yonsei University, and developed VR therapy technology for hemiplegia patients at ETRI."

– In effect, you started what we now call digital therapeutics (DTx) early.

"Only the name has changed; the essence is the same. Digital therapeutics began in earnest in 2019, but the concept of software as a medical device (SaMD) existed before that. VR is one form of it. Since attempting treatment for hemiplegia back then, we have applied it to various patients with brain injuries to this day."

– Which patient is most memorable?

"A person with apraxia. Literally, a patient unable to carry out desired actions. The command system from the brain to the muscles was tangled, leaving the person not knowing how to use the hands. After a handshake, they could not let go and had to use the other hand to straighten each finger. When we put VR goggles on this patient and told them to catch fish in a virtual space, the hands moved naturally. It was a case that proved a 3D (stereoscopic) virtual world, which conveys a greater sense of space than a flat monitor, activates the brain's entire neural network much more powerfully."

– We hear digital technology also helped improve cognitive function in older adults.

"We thought older adults were not familiar with digital technology such as VR, but in reality they were not. In the virtual world, we had them choose clothes according to the weather and gave scores, and older adults liked it unexpectedly. We confirmed that those who used VR had better attention and memory than the control group who were simply shown a movie."

A researcher at CHA Bundang Medical Center uses a VR therapy device developed by Professor Kim Min-young of rehabilitation medicine. A patient who could not properly raise an arm trains to catch butterflies in a virtual world and naturally gains rehabilitative benefits. /Courtesy of Reporter Jeon Gi-byeong

◇ Mobilizing transcranial magnetic stimulation and soft robots

– VR likely offers high immersion for patients. Why did you also try AR (Augmented Reality), which is less immersive?

"AR overlays virtual images on real objects. For the general public, VR is better for immersion, but for patients undergoing rehabilitation or for older adults, visual information from the real world is obscured, which can cause them to fall or get hurt in VR. Patients with risk factors must be able to feel the virtual world while also seeing reality to ensure safety."

– We heard you also tried treatment that stimulates the brain with magnetic fields.

"In patients with vascular dementia, when we performed transcranial magnetic stimulation, which stimulates specific brain nerves with magnetic fields, we found that inflammatory gene expression in peripheral blood decreased, and that directly translated into improved cognitive function. The correlation coefficient between improved cognitive scores and reduced inflammation was as high as 0.9. We are also pursuing research that uses VR and transcranial stimulation simultaneously."

– Are there any other innovative technologies suitable for rehabilitation?

"I am watching wearable soft robots that are worn like clothing and build strength, rather than being made of metal. Existing robotic rehabilitation devices are too large and heavy, but if thin, light textiles themselves contract like muscles to assist force, patients could wear them like clothes and do rehabilitation 24 hours a day. The technical prototypes already exist. The problem is the speed of commercialization, and it is regrettable that engineers develop separately without working together with physicians."

Professor Kim Min-young points out, "Regulations often can't keep up with the pace of medical technology and only hold it back," adding, "Recently, Korea has also opened the way for stem cell therapies, but we still lag far behind Japan." /Courtesy of Reporter Jeon Gi-byeong

◇ "There are no answers if you do research without seeing patients"

Since 2011, Kim has published 86 papers in international journals. That works out to six papers a year. Of those, Kim was the lead author on 58. This was the result of reading and researching for two to three hours every day despite a busy clinical schedule. Would there not be even more achievements if Kim focused only on research? Kim flatly said, "If you leave the clinical setting, you cannot do proper research."

– Physician-scientists who focus more on research than on clinical practice are drawing attention these days. But you emphasize that true physician-scientists must have clinical experience.

"As a medical student, I was taught to hold an autistic child close when a seizure occurs. The seizure in an autistic child is the result of the proprioception that recognizes body position and the existence of the limbs working excessively. Looking back, holding them was a stimulus to control the sensory problem. Without such clinical experience, a physician who does not know the limits patients face can conduct research for papers but cannot deliver solutions for patients. I advise juniors to complete their residency and then pursue research or startups."

– Is that why you use various treatment methods to restore brain function?

"While advising on government-affiliated committees that evaluate research and development projects, I have often seen developers create based only on their assumptions and guesses without knowing how technology is used in the clinical setting. It was the same for both medical devices and advanced regenerative therapies. If a technology is to be used on patients, collaborating with physicians who have extensive clinical experience is the shortcut to success. There is no royal road to treatment. Whether it is cell therapy or VR, all are needed depending on the situation. If you insist only on what you know, patients lose out."

– There must be many frustrations on the institutional side as well.

"With the enforcement of the Act on Advanced Regenerative Medicine and Advanced Biopharmaceuticals, the way has opened for stem cell therapy, but there are still many cases where the speed of scientific progress is not matched by laws and regulations. In addition, there is a conservative climate in which experts in related diseases do not actively adopt new treatments. Despite meaningful clinical research results for cord blood in cerebral palsy, pediatric patients still are not receiving treatment."

☞ Professor Kim Min-young

Kim graduated from Yonsei University College of Medicine and received a master's and a doctorate from the same graduate school. From 2000 to 2003, Kim worked as an invited researcher on the VR interface research team at the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), seeking convergence between medicine and engineering. Kim is currently a professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at Bundang Cha Hospital, CHA University, and head of the Digital Innovation Medical Center at Cha Advanced Research Institute. A global authority in cord blood cell therapy for cerebral palsy, Kim received the prime minister's commendation on Health Day in 2024 and the Seokjeon Shin Jeong-soon Academic Award in 2025. Kim is a full member of the Korean Academy of Medical Sciences. Kim served as policy director of the Korean Medical Association and chair of the Korean Society of Pediatric Rehabilitation and Developmental Medicine, and currently serves as a director of the Korean Society for Stem Cell Research and the Korean Digital Therapeutics Society.

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