Nerve damage resulting from spinal cord injury (SCI) often leads to temporary or permanent loss of function and contributes to poor quality of life. Most common among males below 30 years of age, SCI recovery has been limited specifically as a result of the low growth capacity of neurons and a lack of nerve growth factors.
While current SCI treatment focuses on stabilizing the injured area and preventing secondary injury through a combination of surgery, pharmacological intervention, and rehabilitation, the success of treatment has been limited and unable to stimulate spinal cord regeneration.
Considering the limited success of confidential SCI treatments, several types of stem cells are currently being tested for the treatment of SCI, including mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) isolated from bone marrow (BMSCs), umbilical cord (UC-MSCs), and adipose tissue (ADSCs).
In this review, Liau et al. discuss the current status of MSC therapy for SCI, criteria to consider when applying MSC therapy, and review novel biological therapies that can be used together with MSC therapy to enhance its therapeutic potential.
Based on the results of clinical trials, the authors conclude that MSC therapy is beneficial for SCI patients. While not all patients responded to MSC therapy, the authors note that observed improvement varied from patient to patient. In addition to discrepancies attributed to patient variations, source of MSC, route of stem cell administration, timing of cell administration, number of cell administrations, number of cells administered, and cell preparation methods were also observed to affect the efficacy of therapy.
Despite the delayed progress in phase III trials, there are several new therapeutic treatment strategies that incorporate stem cell secretory product-based therapy, including stem cell secretome therapy, scaffold-based therapy, and immunotherapy. The authors indicate that all of these novel therapeutic approaches may be able to be used in combination with MSC therapy to enhance the therapeutic efficacy of MSCs by improving cell survival, migration, engraftment, and proliferation.
The authors conclude this review by summarizing that, to date, MSC therapy has been demonstrated to be safe but unable to improve neurological function for all treated patients. Despite the limited success of this therapy, other studies are currently underway in an effort to improve the delivery of MSCs and MSC-derived products by utilizing scaffolds or by combining them with immunotherapy to improve the efficacy of the treatment.
Source: “Treatment of spinal cord injury with mesenchymal stem cells – NCBI.” 22 Sep. 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7510077/.
St. Petersburg, Florida
