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Review
. 2024 Apr;19(4):818-824.
doi: 10.4103/1673-5374.382230.

Regenerative medicine strategies for chronic complete spinal cord injury

Shogo Hashimoto  1 , Narihito Nagoshi  2 , Masaya Nakamura  2 , Hideyuki Okano  3
Affiliations
Review

Regenerative medicine strategies for chronic complete spinal cord injury

Shogo Hashimoto et al. Neural Regen Res. 2024 Apr.

Abstract

Spinal cord injury is a condition in which the parenchyma of the spinal cord is damaged by trauma or various diseases. While rapid progress has been made in regenerative medicine for spinal cord injury that was previously untreatable, most research in this field has focused on the early phase of incomplete injury. However, the majority of patients have chronic severe injuries; therefore, treatments for these situations are of fundamental importance. The reason why the treatment of complete spinal cord injury has not been studied is that, unlike in the early stage of incomplete spinal cord injury, there are various inhibitors of neural regeneration. Thus, we assumed that it is difficult to address all conditions with a single treatment in chronic complete spinal cord injury and that a combination of several treatments is essential to target severe pathologies. First, we established a combination therapy of cell transplantation and drug-releasing scaffolds, which contributes to functional recovery after chronic complete transection spinal cord injury, but we found that functional recovery was limited and still needs further investigation. Here, for the further development of the treatment of chronic complete spinal cord injury, we review the necessary approaches to the different pathologies based on our findings and the many studies that have been accumulated to date and discuss, with reference to the literature, which combination of treatments is most effective in achieving functional recovery.

Keywords: cell transplantation; chronic phase; complete transection; regenerative medicine; spinal cord injury.

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Conflict of interest statement

None

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Regenerative medicine strategies for various inhibitory factors of chronic complete spinal cord injury.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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