Fast-tracking regenerative medicine for traumatic brain injury

Abstract

Traumatic brain injury remains a global health crisis that spans all demographics, yet there exist limited treatment options that may effectively curtail its lingering symptoms. Traumatic brain injury pathology entails a progression from primary injury to inflammation-mediated secondary cell death. Sequestering this inflammation as a means of ameliorating the greater symptomology of traumatic brain injury has emerged as an attractive treatment prospect. In this review, we recapitulate and evaluate the important developments relating to regulating traumatic brain injury-induced neuroinflammation, edema, and blood-brain barrier disintegration through pharmacotherapy and stem cell transplants. Although these studies of stand-alone treatments have yielded some positive results, more therapeutic outcomes have been documented from the promising area of combined drug and stem cell therapy. Harnessing the facilitatory properties of certain pharmaceuticals with the anti-inflammatory and regenerative effects of stem cell transplants creates a synergistic effect greater than the sum of its parts. The burgeoning evidence in favor of combined drug and stem cell therapies warrants more elaborate preclinical studies on this topic in order to pave the way for later clinical trials.

Keywords: clinical trials; combined therapy; inflammatory cascade; neuroinflammation; neuroprotection; neurotrauma; pharmacotherapy; preclinical studies; secondary cell death; stem cells.

Figure 1

Drugs and stem cells work together to yield enhanced therapeutic outcomes. During the chronic phase of traumatic brain injury, persisting neuroinflammation contributes significantly to secondary neural cell death. While stand-alone cell therapy can be effective to an extent, combining stem cell transplantation with drug therapies may synergistically attenuate inflammatory neurodegeneration and promote regenerative mechanisms within the brain, thereby enhancing functional recovery following traumatic brain injury.