Young Patient’s Experimental Treatment Inspires Her Goal to Become a Surgeon

In 2019, Annalisa Heiss was in a car accident in her home state of Georgia, which left the then 16-year-old with a significant injury to her leg from a wooden pole that had punctured her groin.
For many months, “it was painful because my knee wasn’t functioning,” Heiss says. “I had to lock my leg to walk with sort of a limp. The leg fatigued a lot. Because it affected a nerve, I experienced tingling and numbness.”
Her physical therapist recommended a clinical trial in Miami.
Eager to recover and regain her quality of life, Annalisa and her parents made the trip to South Florida to learn more about the research study and get evaluated by its principal investigator, Allan Levi, M.D., Ph.D., a spine and peripheral nerve surgeon with the University of Miami Health System.
“Annalisa had a lot of soft tissue injury and was left partially paralyzed in the quadriceps muscle of one leg. In Georgia, she received physical therapy for strengthening, but the muscle wasn’t going to recover without nerve repair. Her nerve was fully transected, so the nerve ends couldn’t regrow together,” Dr. Levi says.
Dr. Levi and other researchers with The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, a Center of Excellence at UM’s Miller School of Medicine, are developing new treatments for traumatic spinal cord and brain injury, peripheral nerve injury and neurodegenerative disorders. Their clinical research study evaluates the safety and effectiveness of injecting a patient with their own peripheral nervous system Schwann cells (which help keep neurons alive) following a severe injury to a major nerve — just like the debilitating injury Annalisa was living with.
“We began with a biopsy of a sensory nerve to grow Annalisa’s Schwann cells,” Dr. Levi says. “After her cells ‘cooked’ in our laboratory for a few weeks, she returned for the surgical repair consisting of the nerve grafts plus her own Schwann cells.” Dr. Levi and The Miami Project team took part of Annalisa’s sural nerve from her right leg to graft into the femoral nerve on her left leg. About 12 to 14 months later, she started to experience some motor improvement.
Heiss’s mobility improved over time as her nerves regrew to the muscle.
“One day, my motor function just came back without me really noticing it. Then I noticed my knee extension coming back. Most of my motor function returned after two years,” she says.
“When I was going into the surgery, I didn’t expect much progress from it because my physical therapist had warned me that most people who suffer from nerve transections like this just don’t have any motor function because it’s very hard to get it back,” Heiss says. “But once a little of my motor function returned, my motivation to start working on it in physical therapy came back, and that brought along a lot of progress. Now I can play basketball and run. I can walk, lift heavy weights, and do a lot of active things. I’ve made very close to a complete recovery — maybe a 95% recovery — and I’m very happy with it.”
This experimental treatment and expert care she received from the Miami Project marked the beginning of Heiss’s interest in studying medicine, engaging in medical research and conducting life-changing surgical interventions.
“I’m so pleased that the experience inspired her interest in medical school,” Dr. Levi says. “Five years after her participation in our trial, she returned as a research intern with The Miami Project’s Scholars Program.” Annalisa spent 10 weeks this past summer participating in the Miami Project’s Henry G. Steinbrenner Scholars Program, which empowers undergraduate student scholars to actively participate in every step of the research process.
The scholars program was a nice way to introduce me to the research side of medicine because I’ve always been the patient.
– Annalisa Heiss
“It was great to see the researcher and clinician side and learn how they run clinical trials like the one I was in.”
David W. McMillan, Ph.D., Director of Education and Outreach with The Miami Project, oversees the program and says that Heiss returning to the Miller School as a summer scholar was a “full-circle return” to the experience that launched her journey.
“In her interview, Annalisa clearly articulated how her positive experience receiving a peripheral nerve surgery, combined with an experimental therapeutic, from our neurosurgical team inspired her desire to pursue a career in medicine,” says Dr. McMillan. “As an educator, I see the greatest potential when academic achievement and lived experience align in such a way.”
“The scholars program opened my eyes to the types of fields that are available to researchers,” Heiss says. “In high school, I didn’t have any interest in medicine. But, my doctors, physical therapists, and the clinicians who treated me- their attitude about their careers and toward medicine itself is what really brought me closer to studying medicine myself. Now, my plan is to get into medical school, and I’m pretty sure I want to go into some type of surgery.”
Dana Kantrowitz is a contributor for UHealth’s news service.