UC San Diego researchers derived spinal cord neural stem cells from human pluripotent stem cells transplanted into a rat model with spinal cord injury, according to a study in Nature Methods.
Here are three things to know:
1. Study authors found the spinal cord neural stem cellsdifferentiated into diverse spinal cord neurons that occupy multiple positions along the length of the spine.
2. The grafts synaptically integrated into multiple host intraspinal and supraspinal systems and improved post-SCI functional outcomes.
3. Researchers concluded hPSC-derived spinal cord neural stem cellscould have a range of applications for in vitro disease modeling and improve clinically translatable cell source for spinal cord regeneration.
"With the ability to expand and maintain large numbers of undifferentiated neural stem cells, we believe advancement to human clinical trials could be in a time frame of as little as five years," said first author Hiromi Kumamaru, MD, PhD, in a statement.