Can cell therapy heal a spinal cord injury?

Literature survey.

To summarize and discuss current possibilities and success rates for the treatment of spinal cord injury in animal models.

University of Antwerp, Belgium.

We searched Pubmed for publications from 1997 onwards. Seven older papers were used for completion of data.

Despite major progress in pharmacological and surgical approaches, a spinal cord injury still remains a very complex medical and psychological challenge, both for the patients and their relatives, as well as for the involved physicians, with currently no existing curative therapy. For a future efficient treatment, one has to consider and combine four main approaches: (1) tissue or cell transplantation, (2) providing growth-stimulating factors (neurotrophic factors), (3) blocking factors which inhibit neural regeneration and (4) modulation of inflammatory response following spinal cord injury.

Although different treatment options have proven to be successful in animal models, they also provide a realistic view on a complex therapeutical approach, which needs to be further investigated in many carefully designed animal studies before human applications can be considered.