Japanese Researchers Repairing Spinal Cord Injury with Human Dental Pulp Stem Cells
Saturday, 03 December 2011
One of the most common causes of disability in young adults is spinal cord injury. Currently, there is no proven reparative treatment. Hope that a stem cell population, specifically dental pulp stem cells, might be of benefit to individuals with severe spinal cord injury has now been provided by the work of Akihito Yamamoto and colleagues, at Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, Japan, in a rat model of this devastating condition.
In the study, when rats with severe spinal cord injury were transplanted with human dental pulp stem cells they showed marked recovery of hind limb function. Detailed analysis revealed that the human dental pulp stem cells mediated their effects in three ways: they inhibited the death of nerve cells and their support cells; they promoted the regeneration of severed nerves; and they replaced lost support cells by generating new ones. Yamamoto and colleagues therefore hope that this approach can be translated into an effective treatment for severe spinal cord injury.
Contact: Karen Honey
Reference:
Human dental pulp–derived stem cells promote locomotor recovery after complete transection of the rat spinal cord by multiple neuro-regenerative mechanismsKiyoshi Sakai, Akihito Yamamoto, Kohki Matsubara, Shoko Nakamura, Mami Naruse, Mari Yamagata, Kazuma Sakamoto, Ryoji Tauchi, Norimitsu Wakao, Shiro Imagama, Hideharu Hibi, Kenji Kadomatsu, Naoki Ishiguro and Minoru Ueda
J Clin Invest. 2011, doi:10.1172/JCI59251
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1 comment:
Great news for rodents! I am a T1 (complete) paraplegic and have followed with keen interest for sometime the progress in this area. We have been able to get our rodent friends to move their paralysed limbs for sometime now but I am yet to see any of it transfer over to us mortals! If the Chinese gunpowder rockets of years ago were our first steps to landing on Mars then by comparison this is more of a fizzle than a bang!
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