Cell Stem Cell: Big Break! "Black Box" neural stem cell transplant successfully repairs spinal cord injury!

Introduction: Neural stem cell transplantation is a technique that transplants neural stem cells into the host body, causing them to move towards the lesions of the nervous system, and to survive, multiply, and differentiate into neuronal or glial cells, thereby facilitating the partial recovery of the host's missing function.
, scientists at the University of California, San Diego, successfully transplanted neural stem cells into spinal cord injuries in mice and revealed the mechanism.
in recent years, neurostem research has become a hot spot for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases and central nervous system injuries, and the use of stem cells to restore the function lost by patients due to spinal cord injury (SCI) has long been the ambition of scientists and doctors.
in the United States, nearly 18,000 people develop SCI each year, and another 294,000 suffer from SCI with some degree of permanent paralysis or reduced bodily fluids, such as bladder control difficulties or breathing difficulties. in a new study
, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine successfully transplanted highly differentiated neural stem cells into spinal cord injuries in mice, while recording how the grafts grow and fill the damage site, integrating and mimicking them with existing neural networks in animals. "Before this study, we found that these stem cell transplants developed in the lab were a bit like black boxes," said Steven Ceto, lead author of the study,
their study, published in the August 5 issue of Cell Stem Stem Stem Grafts Form Synap Synaptic Networks that integrates with Circuit Host S. Spinal Cord Injury. "Although previous studies have shown that the function of SCI animal models has improved after neural stem cell transplants, scientists do not know exactly what is going on,"
. "We know that damaged host axons grow widely to the damaged site, and transplant edited neurons extend a lot of axons into the spinal cord, but we don't know what actually happens inside the transplant, and we don't know whether the host axons and transplanted axons are really establishing functional connections," says
Ceto.
"So Ceto, Tuszynski and colleagues used the latest technology to use light instead of electricity to stimulate and record the activity of genetic ally and anatomically defined neuronal populations.
this ensures that they know exactly which hosts and transplanted neurons are working without having to worry about currents spreading through the tissue and producing potentially misleading results.
they found that even without specific stimuli, transplanted neurons spontaneously discharge in different clusters of neurons with high correlation, just like neural networks in the normal spinal cord.
when the researchers stimulated regenerative axons from the animal's brain, they found strong reactions to clusters of transplanted neurons that were equally spontaneous, suggesting that these neural networks received functional synaptic connections from the inputs that normally drive motion.
sensory stimuli such as tapping and pinching also activate seispensed neurons. "We found that the spinal cord neurons below the injury site could be activated by stimulating the extension of the graft axon into these areas," says Ceto, a summary of the
.S. Illustration.
put all these results together, the results show that neural stem cell grafts have a strong self-assembly capability to form spinal cord-like neural networks that integrate with the function of the host nervous system.
after years of speculation and inference, we now directly demonstrate that in fact, every component of neuronal relay after spinal cord injury actually works.
" Tuszynski said his team is currently working on several ways to enhance functional connectivity of stem cell grafts, such as using the topology of stent tissue grafts to mimic the topology of the normal spinal cord, and using electrical stimulation to enhance the synaptic connection between the host and the transplant neurons. "It could be years before stem cells, irritation, rehabilitation and other interventions are perfectly matched, and patients are now suffering from spinal cord injuries," said
Tuszynski.
, we are currently working with regulators to bring our stem cell transplant methods into clinical trials as soon as possible.
if all goes well, we can get treatment within a decade.
"