Abstract
Spinal cord injury (SCI) represents one of the most complicated and heterogeneous pathological processes of central nervous system (CNS) impairments, which is still beyond functional regeneration. Transplantation of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) has been shown to promote the repair of the injured spinal cord tissues in animal models, and therefore, there is much interest in the clinical use of these cells. However, many questions which are essential to improve the therapy effects remain unanswered. For instance, the functional roles and related molecular regulatory mechanisms of MSCs in vivo are not yet completely determined. It is important for transplanted cells to migrate into the injured tissue, to survive and undergo neural differentiation, or to play neural protection roles by various mechanisms after SCI. In this review, we will focus on some of the recent knowledge about the biological behavior and function of MSCs in SCI. Meanwhile, we highlight the function of biomaterials to direct the behavior of MSCs based on our series of work on silk fibroin biomaterials and attempt to emphasize combinational strategies such as tissue engineering for functional improvement of SCI.
Highlights
Spinal cord injury (SCI) usually results in severe neural dysfunction below the injury site
Studies indicate that mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) with enhanced migratory ability to the lesion site following SCI enhance the antiapoptotic effects by upregulating the expression of stromal cell-derived factor-1 (SDF-1)/ CXC chemokine receptor 4 (CXCR4) axis
Our recent study demonstrates that calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) is one of the key factors that regulate the homing of transplanted MSCs to sites of SCI [21]
Summary
Spinal cord injury (SCI) usually results in severe neural dysfunction below the injury site. The neuropathological outcome of SCI is complicated, and several challenging objectives, such as decreasing neural cell death, reducing scarring and cavitation, regaining healthy neural cells, and stimulating functional axonal regeneration, remolding the injury niche should be taken into consideration [7,8,9,10,11]. Numerous studies have demonstrated that stem cells might provide a source of neural cells as well as exerting neuroprotective effects after SCI. It is of considerable interest as to how stem cells respond to the local environment and play functional roles in vivo, which will provide important information for improving the therapy effects and designing better therapeutic strategies
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