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Review
. 2015 Jan;10(1):10-6.
doi: 10.4103/1673-5374.150638.

Induced pluripotent stem cell-derived neural stem cell therapies for spinal cord injury

Corinne A Lee-Kubli  1 , Paul Lu  2
Affiliations
Review

Induced pluripotent stem cell-derived neural stem cell therapies for spinal cord injury

Corinne A Lee-Kubli et al. Neural Regen Res. 2015 Jan.

Abstract

The greatest challenge to successful treatment of spinal cord injury is the limited regenerative capacity of the central nervous system and its inability to replace lost neurons and severed axons following injury. Neural stem cell grafts derived from fetal central nervous system tissue or embryonic stem cells have shown therapeutic promise by differentiation into neurons and glia that have the potential to form functional neuronal relays across injured spinal cord segments. However, implementation of fetal-derived or embryonic stem cell-derived neural stem cell therapies for patients with spinal cord injury raises ethical concerns. Induced pluripotent stem cells can be generated from adult somatic cells and differentiated into neural stem cells suitable for therapeutic use, thereby providing an ethical source of implantable cells that can be made in an autologous fashion to avoid problems of immune rejection. This review discusses the therapeutic potential of human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived neural stem cell transplantation for treatment of spinal cord injury, as well as addressing potential mechanisms, future perspectives and challenges.

Keywords: astrocytes; axonal growth; axonal regeneration; differentiation; human; neuronal relay; neurons; neuroprotection; oligodendrocytes; remyelination; secondary degeneration; transplantation.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of interest: None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Schematic illustration of the potential clinical application of iPSC-derived NSC therapies in patients with SCI. (A) Patient-derived fibroblasts would be reprogrammed to iPSCs, differentiated into NSCs and implanted into the SCI site as an autologous graft. (B) A representative image illustrating robust axon outgrowth (shown in green, expression of GFP) along white matter tracts and projections into host grey matter (indicated by NeuN labeling of host neurons in red) by iPSC-derived NSCs that have differentiated into neurons in our rat study. A target of clinical translation may be to use iPSC-derived NSCs to generate neuronal relays to yield functional recovery. iPSC: Induced pluripotent stem cell; NSCs: neural stem cells; SCI: spinal cord injury; GFP: green fluorescent protein.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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