Mechanisms of Stem Cell Therapy in Spinal Cord Injuries

• Published in: Cells (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 10; no. 10; p. 2676
• Main Authors: Shinozaki, Munehisa, Nagoshi, Narihito, Nakamura, Masaya, Okano, Hideyuki
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 06-10-2021; MDPI
• Subjects: activities of daily living; Animals; Apoptosis; Cell therapy; Clinical trials; complete injury; Complications; Edema; Electric Stimulation Therapy; Humans; Injuries; Ischemia; Models, Biological; Nerve Growth Factors - metabolism; Nerve Regeneration; Pathophysiology; Patients; Precision medicine; Recovery of function; Rehabilitation; Review; Spinal cord injuries; Spinal Cord Injuries - complications; Spinal Cord Injuries - pathology; Spinal Cord Injuries - physiopathology; Spinal Cord Injuries - therapy; spinal cord injury; stem cell therapy; Stem Cell Transplantation; Stem cells; target of clinical trial; Therapeutic targets; translational research; spinal cord injury; translational research; target of clinical trial; activities of daily living; complete injury; stem cell therapy
• ISSN: 2073-4409; 2073-4409
• DOI: 10.3390/cells10102676

Every year, 0.93 million people worldwide suffer from spinal cord injury (SCI) with irretrievable sequelae. Rehabilitation, currently the only available treatment, does not restore damaged tissues; therefore, the functional recovery of patients remains limited. The pathophysiology of spinal cord injuries is heterogeneous, implying that potential therapeutic targets differ depending on the time of injury onset, the degree of injury, or the spinal level of injury. In recent years, despite a significant number of clinical trials based on various types of stem cells, these aspects of injury have not been effectively considered, resulting in difficult outcomes of trials. In a specialty such as cancerology, precision medicine based on a patient's characteristics has brought indisputable therapeutic advances. The objective of the present review is to promote the development of precision medicine in the field of SCI. Here, we first describe the multifaceted pathophysiology of SCI, with the temporal changes after injury, the characteristics of the chronic phase, and the subtypes of complete injury. We then detail the appropriate targets and related mechanisms of the different types of stem cell therapy for each pathological condition. Finally, we highlight the great potential of stem cell therapy in cervical SCI.