Progress in Treatments of Spinal Cord Injury: Injection of Stem Cells and Peptides

**WHD: Some research on Spinal Cord Injury repair and regeneration is exciting, **but in order to better understanding where the new projects are going, it helps to have a good general view. the NINDS (National Institute of Neurological Disorder and Stroke) has an excellent page about SCI on their site [1]

Quoting the site, here are the main research domains

1. Protecting surviving nerve cells from further damage
2. Replacing damaged nerve cells
3. Stimulating the regrowth of axons and targeting their connections appropriately
4. Retraining neural circuits to restore body functions

This post is about stem cells driven regeneration. The summary of embryonic stem cells transplantation is not extremely encouraging, and the successes are limited so far. embryonic stem cell have a hard time to reach their target, and fetal spinal cord cells Stem cells are "appear to be more effective in the immature spinal cord than in the adult spinal cord"

On the other hand, transplantation of stem/progenitor cells produced successful functional outcome in animal models of SCI. [2]. Adult stem cell fall into the category of progenitor cells. although they have more limited powers of transformation into just any cells as the true embryonic stem cell do, they can be closer to the type of cells needed against the demyelination process. The Korean team of researcher chose neuron glial-restricted progenitors or oligodendrocyte precursors to target the demyelination process.

Stem cell are not the only approach for material directly injected at the injury location. An Italian team used Self-assembling peptides (SAPs). These are nanomaterials displaying some appealing properties for application in regenerative medicine [3]. That seems even more in the research realm, though

**Talk to your Doctor**

**Sources:**
[[1] Spinal Cord Injury: Hope Through Research ][1]; National Institute of Neurological Disorder and Stroke;june 22, 2011

[2] [ingentaconnect;][2] Stem Cell-Based Cell Therapy for Spinal Cord Injury; Cell Transplantation, Volume 16, Number 4, 2007 , pp. 355-364(10)

[3] [pubmed][3];  Evaluation of early and late effects into the acute spinal cord injury of an injectable functionalized self-assembling scaffold.; PLoS One. 2011;6(5):e19782. Epub 2011 May 18.;

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[1]: http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/sci/detail_sci.htm
[2]: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/search/article?option1=tka&value1=spinal+cord+injury&pageSize=10&index=8
[3]: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21611127
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