Intracerebral xenografts of mouse bone marrow cells in adult rats facilitate restoration of cerebral blood flow and blood–brain barrier

Transplantation of Marrow Stromal Cells Restores Cerebral Blood Flow and Reduces Cerebral Atrophy in Rats with Traumatic Brain Injury: In vivo MRI Study

“…MSCs have been demonstrated to increase angiogenesis (Xiong et al, 2009) and the level of neurotrophic growth factors (Mahmood et al, 2004a) in the traumatized brain and to facilitate the reconstitution of the blood-brain barrier after a focal injury (Borlongan et al, 2004). Hence, angiogenesis evoked by hMSC engraftment and elevated trophic factors that rescue the impaired vasculature (Borlongan et al, 2004) may play a crucial role in the attenuation of TBI-induced hypoperfusion in both the extent and duration observed in the cell-treated animals.…”

“…3G) by early restoration of blood flow perfusion to deliver oxygen and glucose, which may rescue neurons at risk from energy deprivation (Immonem et al, 2010). The ability of MSCs to facilitate vascular remodeling (Borlongan et al, 2004), to enhance neurogenesis (Mahmood et al, 2004b), to protect neurons (Wilkins et al, 2009) and to support axonal regeneration (Ankeny et al, 2004), which in turn moderate neuropathological change and white matter degeneration, may contribute to tissue preservation (Fig. 2I,J) and consequent recovery of functional outcome (Fig.…”

Bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stromal cells for the repair of central nervous system injury

“…43 The potentially important role of induction of local neurotrophic factors is also supported by Chen et al, 44 who showed that intraventricular injection of MSCs in a murine model resulted in an increase in NGF levels as measured in the cerebrospinal fluid. Other mechanisms have been suggested to explain the action of transplanted MSCs, such as an elevated level of transforming growth factor-b (TGF-b) that helps to reduce the formation of scar tissue, and restoration of cerebral blood flow and the blood-brain barrier in models of traumatic brain injury 45 and stroke. 47 Most of these studies found a small number of cells expressing markers of neural lineage; however, many have proposed alternative explanations for their findings of functional recovery, either because they found no evidence of neural differentiation after transplantation, or because the cells were so few in number.…”

Mesenchymal stem cell-based therapy for ischemic stroke

“…Compared to these other stem cells, MSCs have established a solid safety profile in other disease indications, providing the basis for on-going clinical trials to explore MSCs and their cell subpopulations [73,74]. As noted above, MSCs have been transplanted intracerebrally and peripherally [73,[75][76][77][78], with encouraging pilot studies reporting safety, but efficacy remains to be fully assessed [74].…”