Cellular Transplantation-Based Evolving Treatment Options in Spinal Cord Injury

Abstract

Spinal cord injury (SCI) often represents a condition of permanent neurologic deficit. It has been possible to understand and delineate the mechanisms contributing to loss of function following primary injury. The clinicians might hope to improve the outcome in SCI injury by designing treatment strategies that could target these secondary mechanisms of response to injury. However, the approaches like molecular targeting of the neurons or surgical interventions have yielded very limited success till date. In recent times, a great thrust is put on to the cellular transplantation mode of treatment strategies to combat SCI problems so as to gain maximum functional recovery. In this review, we discuss about the various cellular transplantation strategies that could be employed in the treatment of SCI. The success of such cellular approaches involving Schwann cells, olfactory ensheathing cells, peripheral nerve, embryonic CNS tissue and activated macrophage has been supported by a number of reports and has been detailed here. Many of these cell transplantation strategies have reached the clinical trial stages. Also, the evolving field of stem cell therapy has made it possible to contemplate the role of both embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells to stimulate the differentiation of neurons when transplanted in SCI models. Moreover, the roles of tissue engineering techniques and synthetic biomaterials have also been explained with their beneficial and deleterious effects. Many of these cell-based therapeutic approaches have been able to cause only a little change in recovery and a combinatorial approach involving more than one strategy are now being tried out to successfully treat SCI and improve functional recovery.

Overview of Nrf2 as Therapeutic Target in Epilepsy

“…Currently, up to 30% of temporal lobe epilepsy patients have seizures despite treatment with antiepileptic drugs, either mono- or polytherapy, which result in physical harm to the patient and psychosocial dysfunction. This results in physiological damage in the forms of electrolyte imbalance, cerebral edema, congestive renal failure, refractory status epilepticus (SE), and sudden death [ 68 ] and also restricts their quality of life and performance in society [ 69 , 70 , 71 , 72 ]. Therefore, it is a priority to continue investigating the mechanisms underlying epilepsy to identify new targets and potential therapeutic agents for the treatment of this disorder.…”

Anti-inflammatory effect of stem cells against spinal cord injury via regulating macrophage polarization

“…7 Stem cell transplantation is a promising candidate to treat SCI. [8][9][10][11][12] Recent work showed that stem cells, such as mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), [13][14][15] neural stem/progenitor cells (NS/ PCs), 16,17 and embryonic stem cells (ESCs), [18][19][20] have immunoregulatory capacity and anti-inflammatory effects and could enhance functional improvement through inducing macrophages M1/M2 phenotype transformation post SCI. This review will discuss 1) the general feature of macrophages in response to SCI, 2) the phenotype and function of macrophages in SCI, and 3) the effects of stem cells on macrophage polarization and its role in stem cell-based therapies for SCI.…”

Diabetes Research in Iran: a Scientometric Analysis of Publications Output

“…Mortality due to diabetes is more than 80% in the low and middle income countries ( 13 ). WHO predicts diabetes will be the 7th most important cause of mortality in 2030 ( 14 ) and in 2035 near to 592 million people will die due to diabetes ( 15 ).…”