{"id":60596,"date":"2025-11-25T20:56:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T20:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/60596\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T20:56:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T20:56:12","slug":"the-miami-project-to-cure-paralysis-follows-science-and-steady-funding-to-a-broader-mission-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/60596\/","title":{"rendered":"The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis follows science and steady funding to a broader mission"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marc Buoniconti said his father, the late NFL Hall of Famer Nick Buoniconti<\/a>, explained the secret to the success of their nonprofit and its fundraising efforts simply: \u201cWe\u2019re just not good listeners.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the 40 years since Marc Buoniconti, then a college football linebacker at the Citadel, was paralyzed during a routine tackle, they have been told countless times that it was a problem that couldn\u2019t be fixed. The Buonicontis didn\u2019t listen.<\/p>\n

Instead, through the fund that bears their name, they have helped raise more than $550 million for The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, and improved the lives of millions with spinal cord and brain injuries.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Buoniconti Fund has lasted because we\u2019re relentless,\u201d Marc Buoniconti recently told The Associated Press. \u201cWe never give up. When we see a challenge, we face it head-on and don\u2019t stop until we find a solution. It\u2019s that determination, that refusal to quit that\u2019s kept us going all these years.\u201d<\/p>\n

That drive has also led The Miami Project to expand its work beyond curing paralysis. Its research center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine now also studies neurological diseases and disorders including Alzheimer\u2019s disease and Parkinson\u2019s disease, and it is testing the brain-computer interface implant from Elon Musk\u2019s technology company Neuralink<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Changing medicine by creating a hub for paralysis work<\/p>\n

Dr. Barth A. Green, chairman of The Miami Project, who co-founded the organization in 1985 with Nick Buoniconti, says the most surprising developments from the center have been the broadest ones.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery operating room in the world that puts people to sleep monitors their nervous system for safety,\u201d Dr. Green said. \u201cThat was all developed at The Miami Project.\u201d<\/p>\n

Therapeutic hypothermia, where the body is cooled after an injury to protect the brain and spinal cord, is another widely used treatment developed at the center.<\/p>\n

Dr. Green said that before Buoniconti\u2019s accident he had been working on helping those who had been paralyzed for 20 years. Yet there wasn\u2019t a hub for that work until The Miami Project was established.<\/p>\n

It provided a home for him and \u201cthousands of scientists and researchers in Miami and around the world, who were equally engaged by the opportunity to change people\u2019s everyday quality of life and their opportunities to have more function and a better opportunity to be mobile and do things they never dreamt they could before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unexpected advances through multidisciplinary approaches<\/p>\n

Miami Project Scientific Director W. Dalton Dietrich III said gathering those people from a variety of disciplines \u2013 neuroscientists, researchers, clinicians, biomedical engineers \u2013 into one building has led to unexpected advances.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot one particular treatment is going to cure paralysis,\u201d Dietrich said. \u201cSo I\u2019ve tried to look at other disciplines to bring into the project to help us achieve that goal.\u201d<\/p>\n

One new, multidisciplinary area, neuromodulation, is \u201csomething we never thought about five years ago,\u201d Dietrich said. \u201cIt\u2019s just an exciting area where you can stimulate these residual circuits after brain injury or spinal cord injury in patients and they start moving their limbs.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Buoniconti Fund\u2019s support for the center helps accelerate research in these areas by funding early trials. That, in turn, makes it easier to eventually receive grants from government agencies like the National Institutes of Health or the Department of Defense, Dietrich said.<\/p>\n

Marc Buoniconti says \u201cit\u2019s hard to put into words\u201d seeing so many people rally behind him and the millions of others who have been paralyzed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat started as a promise to help me walk again became a mission to help millions,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery resource, every dollar, every hour given is a testament to the belief that we can change lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mark Dalton, co-chairman of Tudor Investment Corp., said that belief resonated with him and made him want to get involved with The Buonicontis even before he met them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had tremendous admiration for him as a father who was never going to give up on finding a cure for what ailed his son,\u201d Dalton said. \u201cAnd his son was a representation of millions of other people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018They hooked me\u2019<\/p>\n

Once he learned more about The Miami Project, Dalton said he was impressed by its science-driven approach. Its setting on a university campus was also important to the former chairman of the board of trustees at Denison and Vanderbilt universities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey put the line in the water,\u201d said Dalton, who now chairs the Buoniconti Fund\u2019s biggest annual fundraiser, The Great Sports Legends Dinner. \u201cThey hooked me. I\u2019m all in.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a common feeling around The Miami Project, which counts legendary golfer Jack Nicklaus and Grammy winner Gloria Estefan among its supporters. And it\u2019s something Marc Buoniconti says he does not take for granted.<\/p>\n

He hopes The Miami Project\u2019s work will continue to expand.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy biggest dream is for our researchers to find a way to fully repair the nervous system,\u201d Buoniconti said. \u201cWhen we do that, we\u2019ll change the entire landscape for paralysis and so many other neuro conditions. We\u2019ll give so many people their lives back. That\u2019s what keeps me going, and that\u2019s what makes every struggle to this point worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n

_____<\/p>\n

Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP\u2019s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP\u2019s philanthropy coverage, visit https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/philanthropy<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marc Buoniconti said his father, the late NFL Hall of Famer Nick Buoniconti, explained the secret to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[558,143,1882,28,477,1811,571,36625,30587,36622,36624,36495,13324,123,125,124,36496,36623,1515,554,1110],"class_list":["post-60596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-business","tag-college-football","tag-fl-state-wire","tag-florida","tag-general-news","tag-gloria-estefan","tag-health","tag-jack-nicklaus","tag-local-news-for-apple","tag-marc-buoniconti","tag-mark-dalton","tag-medical-technology","tag-medication","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-neurological-disorders","tag-nick-buoniconti","tag-philanthropy","tag-science","tag-u-s-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}