Shiva Amanollahi; Hossein Kazemi Mehrjerdi
Abstract
Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a severe central nervous system trauma (CNS) that has two primary and secondary phases. The initial phase, which is irreversible, causes nerve tissue destruction and bleeding. Various factors in the second phase together aggravate the primary damage. One of the important factors ...
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Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a severe central nervous system trauma (CNS) that has two primary and secondary phases. The initial phase, which is irreversible, causes nerve tissue destruction and bleeding. Various factors in the second phase together aggravate the primary damage. One of the important factors of the second phase is the cascading of inflammatory factors, which, contribute to the further destruction of nerve tissue. In addition to surgical treatments, drug and cell-based or extracellular vesicles therapy, by modulating the immune system and reducing inflammatory factors at the lesion site, prevent further destruction of nerve tissue and help improve the patient's neurological and motor function. Researchers have provided many chemical and herbal medicines to reduce complications caused by spinal cord injury, many of which are currently being used and are also known as drugs of choice. However, sometimes the long-term use of these drugs causes side effects. Today, the new approach of cell therapy and the use of extracellular vesicles (EVs) is being investigated, which has minimized the side effects of drug treatments and helped to improve the function of nerve cells. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), have a high ability to differentiate into different cells and to modulate the immune system by secreting paracrine factors. But since they cannot cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB), researchers solved this problem by extracting extracellular vesicles (EVs) derived from mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), which also contain all paracrine factors. In this study, a brief overview of drug treatments, stem cells, and extracellular vesicular therapy in the treatment of spinal cord injury has been discussed.
Maryam Moghaddam Matin; Morvarid Saeinasab; Saeideh Nakhaei-Rad; Mahdi Mirahmadi; Nasser Mahdavi Shahri; Mahmoud Mahmoudi; Ahmad Reza Bahrami
Abstract
Abstract
Regeneration is a biological phenomenon, which takes place via two main mechanisms: first,
dedifferentiation of mature cells followed by their differentiation into functional new cells and second,
activation of endogenous somatic stem cells for regeneration of damaged or lost tissues. One ...
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Abstract
Regeneration is a biological phenomenon, which takes place via two main mechanisms: first,
dedifferentiation of mature cells followed by their differentiation into functional new cells and second,
activation of endogenous somatic stem cells for regeneration of damaged or lost tissues. One of the best
examples of healing process in mammals is the regeneration of damaged pinna in rabbits by blastema tissue.
The aim of present study was to investigate culture requirements, proliferative properties and expression of
some stemness factors in cells derived from regenerating blastema tissue obtained from rabbit pinna in vitro.
The regenerating tissues were obtained from male New Zealand white rabbits by double punching of the pinna
and cell culture conditions were set to derive and enrich the self renewing cells for further characterisation. The
cells were subjected to survival and growth examinations in vitro, and expression of several stemness factors
was studied in these cells using reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Results revealed
that the derived cells are rather immortal, as they have been growing for more than 120 passages in culture up
until this report. Furthermore, RT-PCR and flow cytometry analyses showed that these cells express a number
of stemness related genes including Oct4 and Sox2. In conclusion, in this study, stem like cells were derived
from blastema tissue of rabbit ears for the first time, showing great self renewing capacity, which provides a
suitable in vitro model for regeneration studies. Moreover, they could be considered as a good source of stem
like cells for future applications.