• en
  • About
    • Indexes and Databases
    • Advertising
    • Subscriptions
    • Contact us
  • Issues
    • Current issue
    • Archive
  • Editorial board
  • For Authors
  • News
    • Interview
    • Events
    • Conferences
    • Video
  • Our Partners
Menu
  • About
    • Indexes and Databases
    • Advertising
    • Subscriptions
    • Contact us
  • Issues
    • Current issue
    • Archive
  • Editorial board
  • For Authors
  • News
    • Interview
    • Events
    • Conferences
    • Video
  • Our Partners

Blog

Home/News/Scientists repair injured spinal cord using patients’ own stem cells

Scientists repair injured spinal cord using patients’ own stem cells

  • Posted On 25 Feb 2021
  • By JCOT
  • In News

Intravenous injection of bone marrow derived stem cells (MSCs) in patients with spinal cord injuries led to significant improvement in motor functions, researchers from Yale University and Japan report Feb. 18 in the Journal of Clinical Neurology and Neurosurgery.

For more than half of the patients, substantial improvements in key functions — such as ability to walk, or to use their hands — were observed within weeks of stem cell injection, the researchers report. No substantial side effects were reported.

The patients had sustained, non-penetrating spinal cord injuries, in many cases from falls or minor trauma, several weeks prior to implantation of the stem cells. Their symptoms involved loss of motor function and coordination, sensory loss, as well as bowel and bladder dysfunction. The stem cells were prepared from the patients’ own bone marrow, via a culture protocol that took a few weeks in a specialized cell processing center. The cells were injected intravenously in this series, with each patient serving as their own control. Results were not blinded and there were no placebo controls.

Yale scientists Jeffery D. Kocsis, professor of neurology and neuroscience, and Stephen G. Waxman, professor of neurology, neuroscience and pharmacology, were senior authors of the study, which was carried out with investigators at Sapporo Medical University in Japan. Key investigators of the Sapporo team, Osamu Honmou and Masanori Sasaki, both hold adjunct professor positions in neurology at Yale.

Kocsis and Waxman stress that additional studies will be needed to confirm the results of this preliminary, unblinded trial. They also stress that this could take years. Despite the challenges, they remain optimistic.

“Similar results with stem cells in patients with stroke increases our confidence that this approach may be clinically useful,” noted Kocsis. “This clinical study is the culmination of extensive preclinical laboratory work using MSCs between Yale and Sapporo colleagues over many years.”

“The idea that we may be able to restore function after injury to the brain and spinal cord using the patient’s own stem cells has intrigued us for years,” Waxman said. “Now we have a hint, in humans, that it may be possible.”


Story Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com

Materials provided by Yale University

Read more:

  • New hope for spinal cord injuriesNew hope for spinal cord injuries
  • Implanted neural stem cell grafts show functionality in spinal cord injuriesImplanted neural stem cell grafts show functionality in spinal cord injuries
  • Using donor stem cells to treat spinal cord injuryUsing donor stem cells to treat spinal cord injury
  • Brain cells restored by stem cell therapy following stroke, neurological diseasesBrain cells restored by stem cell therapy following stroke, neurological diseases

  • ←
  • →
  • en

Search

Recent articles

  • Organ transplant recipients remain vulnerable to COVID-19 even after second vaccine dose
  • A new, vital player in graft-versus-host disease and organ transplant rejection
  • Light shed on the coordination of neural stem cell activation
  • Regenerating hair follicle stem cells
  • Scientists use nanotechnology to detect bone-healing stem cells

Registration certificate
КВ № 19692-9492Р (20.02.2013)
ISSN 2311-021X (Online), ISSN 2308-3794 (Print)
©2013 Institute of Cell Therapy

ABOUT US
ISSUES
EDITORIAL BOARD
FOR AUTHORS
NEWS
PARTNERS

Search

Contacts

  • Ukraine, 03680, Kyiv, Lubomyr Husar avenue
  • +38 (096) 921-23-88
  • info@transplantology.org