Abstract
Hundreds of thousands of people suffer spinal cord injuries each year. The experimental application of stem cells following spinal cord injury has opened a new era to promote neuroprotection and neuroregeneration of damaged tissue. Currently, there is great interest in the intravenous administration of the secretome produced by mesenchymal stem cells in acute or subacute spinal cord injuries. However, it is important to highlight that undifferentiated neural stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells are able to adapt to the damaged environment and produce the so-called lesion-induced secretome. This review article focuses on current research related to the secretome and the lesion-induced secretome and their roles in modulating spinal cord injury symptoms and functional recovery, emphasizing different compositions of the lesion-induced secretome in various models of spinal cord injury.
Highlights
The homing properties of transplanted mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) can be affected by a number of soluble factors produced by the injured area, including tumour necrosis factor (TNF)-alpha, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF), fibroblast growth factor (FGF), insulin-like growth factor (IGF), stromal cell-derived factor 1 (SDF-1), and monocyte chemoattractant protein 1 (MCP-1) and -3
As we described above, grafted NE-GFP-4C stem cells were able to adapt to the damaged environment and produce the specific lesion-induced secretome
Human undifferentiated induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) grafted into the lesion cavity following spinal cord contusion injury produced various factors, such as the neurotrophic factor glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF), the anti-inflammatory protein IL-10 and the proinflammatory protein MIP-1 alpha for at least 1 week. hiPSCs induced tissue sparing, the preservation of axons of propriospinal and supraspinal neurons and limited the deposition of chondroitin sulphate proteoglycans (CSPGs), which led to better functional improvement [125]
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. 90% of SCIs result from traumatic injuries and only 10% of them are caused by diseases (tumours, spondylolisthesis, etc.) acquired at birth or later in life or surgery-related manoeuvres [5]. Traffic accidents are the most frequent causes of traumatic SCIs, followed by falls from heights, violence (gunshot and stab wounds) and different sport/recreational activities [6]. The annual incidence of SCI is estimated at 30 to 70 cases per million population worldwide, resulting in more than half a million new patients every year. Various studies have demonstrated that SCI occurs in 50% of the cases at the cervical levels, which causes a high mortality rate due to damage of the respiratory motoneurons and close proximity to the medulla oblongata [9]. The severity of the trauma is accurately graded by the American Spinal Injury Association (ASIA) impairment scale [10]
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