spinal cord injury (sci) is one of the devastating conditions leading to functional and neurological deficits following road traffic accidents. to date, there is no definite treatment for repairing damaged spinal cord tissue. in this regard, cell therapy opens a new window in front of scientists by using different cells such as mesenchymal stem cells, olfactory ensheathing cells, schwann cells,...

The spinal cord is the first central nervous system structure to develop during vertebrate embryogenesis, underscoring its importance to the organism. Because of its early formation, accessibility to the developing spinal cord in amniotes is challenging, often invasive and the experimental approaches amenable to model systems like mammals are limited. In contrast, amphibians, in general and the...

Ideal strategies to ameliorate CNS damage should promote both neuronal survival and axon regeneration. The receptor Neogenin promotes neuronal apoptosis. Its ligand prevents death, but the resulting repulsive guidance molecule a (RGMa)-Neogenin interaction also inhibits axonal growth, countering any prosurvival benefits. Here, we explore strategies to inhibit Neogenin, thus simultaneously enhan...

Bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells can differentiate into neurons and astrocytes after transplantation in the spinal cord of rats with ischemia/reperfusion injury. Although bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells are known to protect against spinal cord ischemia/reperfusion injury through anti-apoptotic effects, the precise mechanisms remain unclear. In the present study, bone marrow mesenchymal ste...

Spinal cord injury results in acute as well as progressive secondary destruction of local and distant nervous tissue through a number of degenerative mechanisms. Spinal cord injury also initiates a number of endogenous neuroprotective and regenerative responses. Understanding of these mechanisms might identify potential targets for treatments after spinal cord injury in humans. Here, we first d...

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a common outcome of traffic accidents and trauma with severe consequences. There has been no cure for such a condition. We performed experiments to evaluate the feasibility of implanting a chitosan tube filled with semifluid type I collagen into the site of surgically induced SCI to facilitate functional recovery. After a segment of the spinal cord, 4mm in length and...

Electrospinning In article 2202785 by Liang Chen, Wenguo Cui, Yong Gu, and co-workers, a living-oriented fiber scaffold is found to fully exploit the advantage of stem cells, which can respond not only regulate local inflammatory microenvironment at early stages spinal cord injury, but also further differentiation fate continuously release brain-derived neurotrophic factor, promote neuronal reg...

In this, the final issue of 2008 witch contains two issues (7 and 8), I would like to take this opportunity to thank those people who have contributed so much of their time and expertise in the interest of maintaining the highly respected reputation of the Journal. The topics to be covered are multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, spinal cord regeneration, TBI, and functional outcome researc...

OBJECTIVE Previously, we reported that synthetic poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate-co-methyl methacrylate) (PHEMA-MMA) channels promoted regeneration of a small number of axons from brainstem motor nuclei yet provided limited functional recovery after complete spinal cord transection at T8 in rats. However, we found that these modulus channels partially collapsed over time. Therefore, we synthes...

The aim of this present study is to evaluate the therapeutic effect of co-transplantation of neuregulin-1-transfected Schwann cells (SCs) and bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs) on a rat model of spinal cord hemi-section injuries (Brown-Séquard syndrome), which is relevant to human clinical spinal cord injury. Both in vivo and in vitro data we received demonstrated that co-transplantation BMSCs w...