Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a severe damage to the spinal cord resulting from a trauma, disease, or a degenerative disorder. SCI leads to irreversible loss of motor and sensory functions below the level of injury. The United States alone experiences 12,000 new traumatic SCI cases every year. The treatment and further management of these injuries involves high cost and results in a lifetime economic burden for the patients, insurance providers and health systems. Unfortunately, there are no treatment options available to reverse an injured spinal cord. Therefore, it is imperative to focus on SCI research to bring back the functional reorganization of spinal cord neural network. Although many stem cell transplantation therapies have been shown to minimize these complications in pre-clinical SCI animal models, challenges with respect to successful clinical translation remains. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop novel advanced strategies for SCI.
Neural stem cells (NSCs) are considered as one such promising avenue for therapeutics to regenerate three different cell types (neurons, astrocytes and oligodendrocytes). This endows NSCs for a wide range of neurodegenerative diseases and SCI. However, the availability of NSCs is limited since lack of donors and ethical concerns in isolation. Therefore, it is very important to generate large production of NSCs from other stem cell sources such as mesenchymal stem cells, hematopoietic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells. Hence this Research Topic mainly focuses on methods for the generation and large-scale production of functional NSCs for use in treating spinal cord injury. Pre-treatment, overexpression of various neurotrophic growth factors to maximize the therapeutic effect of NSCs.
This Research Topic welcomes all ongoing and future research on NSC-based approaches for treatment of SCI. We invite authors to submit Original Research articles, Brief Research descriptions, Clinical Approaches, Chemical and Pharmacophore-based analyses, Review articles with meta-analyses that cover new strategies to combat injured spinal cord, as well as, future direction towards different pharmacological approaches, and clinical trials, including but not limited to:
• Immunomodulatory functions of NSCs to modulate microenvironment at the injured spinal cord.
• Overexpression of various growth factors (such as neurotrophin-3, BDNF, Trk-3, Epo etc.) and miRNAs (e.g. miR-124, miR-561-5p and miR-138-5p) to enhance migration differentiation capabilities of NSCs.
• Exploring the signaling mechanisms of NSCs through which it modulates the trophic and neuroprotective functions.
• Co-transplantation of Schwann cells or olfactory ensheathing cells along with NSCs promote neuronal differentiation as well as encourage secreting multiple neurotrophic factors for improving motor and autonomous improvement.
• Three-dimensional NSC cultures (3D hydrogel, scaffolds, etc.) to improve survival of NSCs and axonal regeneration.
• Cutting edge research (gene therapy, CRISPER/cas9) approaches the SCI.
• Preclinical / clinical trial research studies for regeneration of injured spinal cord.
Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a severe damage to the spinal cord resulting from a trauma, disease, or a degenerative disorder. SCI leads to irreversible loss of motor and sensory functions below the level of injury. The United States alone experiences 12,000 new traumatic SCI cases every year. The treatment and further management of these injuries involves high cost and results in a lifetime economic burden for the patients, insurance providers and health systems. Unfortunately, there are no treatment options available to reverse an injured spinal cord. Therefore, it is imperative to focus on SCI research to bring back the functional reorganization of spinal cord neural network. Although many stem cell transplantation therapies have been shown to minimize these complications in pre-clinical SCI animal models, challenges with respect to successful clinical translation remains. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop novel advanced strategies for SCI.
Neural stem cells (NSCs) are considered as one such promising avenue for therapeutics to regenerate three different cell types (neurons, astrocytes and oligodendrocytes). This endows NSCs for a wide range of neurodegenerative diseases and SCI. However, the availability of NSCs is limited since lack of donors and ethical concerns in isolation. Therefore, it is very important to generate large production of NSCs from other stem cell sources such as mesenchymal stem cells, hematopoietic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells. Hence this Research Topic mainly focuses on methods for the generation and large-scale production of functional NSCs for use in treating spinal cord injury. Pre-treatment, overexpression of various neurotrophic growth factors to maximize the therapeutic effect of NSCs.
This Research Topic welcomes all ongoing and future research on NSC-based approaches for treatment of SCI. We invite authors to submit Original Research articles, Brief Research descriptions, Clinical Approaches, Chemical and Pharmacophore-based analyses, Review articles with meta-analyses that cover new strategies to combat injured spinal cord, as well as, future direction towards different pharmacological approaches, and clinical trials, including but not limited to:
• Immunomodulatory functions of NSCs to modulate microenvironment at the injured spinal cord.
• Overexpression of various growth factors (such as neurotrophin-3, BDNF, Trk-3, Epo etc.) and miRNAs (e.g. miR-124, miR-561-5p and miR-138-5p) to enhance migration differentiation capabilities of NSCs.
• Exploring the signaling mechanisms of NSCs through which it modulates the trophic and neuroprotective functions.
• Co-transplantation of Schwann cells or olfactory ensheathing cells along with NSCs promote neuronal differentiation as well as encourage secreting multiple neurotrophic factors for improving motor and autonomous improvement.
• Three-dimensional NSC cultures (3D hydrogel, scaffolds, etc.) to improve survival of NSCs and axonal regeneration.
• Cutting edge research (gene therapy, CRISPER/cas9) approaches the SCI.
• Preclinical / clinical trial research studies for regeneration of injured spinal cord.
