Scientists have created a stem cell treatment that might potentially lead to novel restorative therapies for those who have suffered a spinal cord damage.
Clinical trials have been hindered by limited stem cell viability and inability to replace injured spinal cord cells following spinal cord damage, despite its enormous promise for tissue healing.
Using a tailored method, this study establishes ground-breaking new territory by directing grafted neuronal stem cells to produce the specific kinds of spinal cord repair cells. It is critical that these newly generated cells survive and operate inside the host wounded spinal cord for a lengthy period of time following a spinal cord accident.
As a neurodegenerative ailment, spinal cord damage is a severe and expensive one, Karimi noted. She estimates that roughly 1,400 new occurrences of spinal cord injury occur annually in Canada, out of a total population of 86,000 people. Of them, 40% are all below the age of 45. It is anticipated that in 2019, the yearly cost of spine nerve lesion in Canada would be around $2.7 billion. She said that these expenses include medical treatment and hospitalizations, and also indirect expenses such as missed or decreased output.
Developing innovative restorative medicine therapies to enhance the standard of life for a wide group of people is an unfulfilled need in the field of spinal cord injury rehabilitation. This is exciting news for spinal cord injury sufferers, who have seen few advancements in treatment since the advent of stem cell research.
It will likely still be some time before this kind of treatment is available to patients, but we know that the researchers involved in this study are doing everything they can to advance neural stem cell transplantation therapies and bring them to a wider clinical application.
The study was published in The Journal of Neuroscience.
