Selected suitable seed cell, scaffold and growth factor could maximize the repair effect using tissue engineering method in spinal cord injury

Abstract

Spinal cord injury usually leads to permanent disability, which could cause a huge financial problem to the patient. Up to now there is no effective method to treat this disease. The key of the treatment is to enable the damage zone axonal regeneration and luckily it could go through the damage zone; last a connection can be established with the target neurons. This study attempts to combine stem cell, material science and genetic modification technology together, by preparing two genes modified adipose-derived stem cells and inducing them into neuron direction; then by compositing them on the silk fibroin/chitosan scaffold and implanting them into the spinal cord injury model, seed cells can have features of neuron cells. At the same time, it could stably express the brain-derived neurotrophic factor and neurotrophin-3, both of which could produce synergistic effects, which have a positive effect on the recovery of spinal cord. The spinal cord scaffold bridges the broken end of the spinal cord and isolates with the surrounding environment, which could avoid a scar effect on the nerve regeneration and provide three-dimensional space for the seed cell growth, and at last we hope to provide a new treatment for spinal cord injury with the tissue engineering technique.

Keywords: Growth factor; Scaffold; Seed cell; Spinal cord injury; Tissue engineering.

Figure 1

Scheme of using tissue engineering method to repair spinal cord injury.

Figure 2

Technology road mapping. SFCS: Silk fibroin/chitosan scaffolds; ADSC: Adipose-derived stem cells; NT-3-RFP: Neurotrophin-3-red fluorescent protein; BDNF: Brain-derived neurophic factor; LV-GFP: Lentivirus Green fluorescent protein.