Stem cell therapy for neurological disease and injury

Despite the anatomical protection provided to the central nervous system (CNS) by the skull and vertebral column, it is still vulnerable to a variety of injuries as well as a number of neurodegenerative diseases. There is little endogenous repair of the CNS, so functional recovery from injury is typically modest. Most neurodegenerative diseases are progressive in their course and few effective therapies exist to delay this disease progression or to promote any recovery. With the understanding that the adult brain can support the generation of new neurons in certain locations and with advances in understanding the biology of such stem or progenitor cells, there is now considerable hope that neural or non-neural derived stem cells can be used for structural brain repair. This review provides an overview of our current understanding of the biology of neural stem cells and their ability to integrate into the mature CNS. The prospects for using grafted stem cells or recruiting endogenous stem cells to treat neurological injury or disease are evaluated.