Disease Focus: Spinal Cord Injury
Molecular Imaging for Stem Cell Science and Clinical Application
Stem cells offer tremendous potential to treat previously intractable diseases. The clinical translation of these therapies, however, presents unique challenges. One challenge is the absence of robust methods to monitor cell location and fate after delivery to the body. The delivery and biological distribution of stem cells over time can be much less predictable compared […]
Developing a regeneration-based functional restoration treatment for spinal cord injury
One of the most exciting and challenging frontiers in neuroscience and medicine is to repair traumatic injuries to the central nervous system (CNS). Most spinal cord and head injuries result in devastating paralyses, yet very limited clinical intervention is currently available to restore the lost abilities. Traumatic injuries of the spine cause fractures and compression […]
Induction of immune tolerance after spinal grafting of human ES-derived neural precursors
Previous clinical studies have shown that grafting of human fetal brain tissue into the CNS of adult recipients can be associated with long-term (more then 10 years) graft survival even after immunosuppression is terminated. These clinical data represent in part the scientific base for the CNS to be designated as an immune privilege site, i.e., […]
hESC-Derived Motor Neurons For the Treatment of Cervical Spinal Cord Injury
Cervical spinal cord injuries result in a loss of upper limb function because the cells within the spinal cord that control upper limb muscles are destroyed. The goal of this research program is to create a renewable human source of these cells, to restore upper limb function in both acute and chronic spinal cord injuries. […]
Spinal ischemic paraplegia: modulation by human embryonic stem cell implant.
schemia-induced paraplegia often combined with a qualitatively defined increase in muscle tone (i.e. spasticity and rigidity) is a serious complication associated with a temporary aortic cross-clamping ( a surgical procedure to repair an aortic aneurysm). In addition to spinal ischemic injury-induced spasticity and rigidity a significant population of patients with traumatic spinal injury develop a […]
Genetic manipulation of human embryonic stem cells and its application in studying CNS development and repair
The advent of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) has offered enormous potential for regenerative medicine and for basic understanding of human biology. On the one hand, hESCs can be turned into many different cell types in culture dish, and specific cell types derived from hESCs offer an almost infinite source for cellular replacement therapies. This […]
New Chemokine-Derived Therapeutics Targeting Stem Cell Migration
This proposal describes a sharply-focused, timely, and rigorous effort to develop new therapies for the treatment of injuries of the Central Nervous System (CNS). The underlying hypothesis for this proposal is that chemokines and their receptors (particularly those involved in inflammatory cascades) actually play important roles in mediating the directed migration of human neural stem […]
The Immunological Niche: Effect of immunosuppressant drugs on stem cell proliferation, gene expression, and differentiation in a model of spinal cord injury.
Our understanding of the effect of immunosuppressive agents on stem cell proliferation and differentiation in the central nervous system is limited. Indeed, even the necessity for long-term immunosuppression to promote the survival of stem cells grafted into the “immunoprivileged” central nervous system (CNS) is unknown. Grafting multipotent stem cells into the injured CNS often results […]
Role of the microenvironment in human iPS and NSC fate and tumorigenesis
Multipotent Neural Stem Cells (NSC) can be derived from adult central nervous system (CNS) tissue, embryonic stem cells (ESC), or iPSC and provide a partially committed cell population that has not exhibited evidence of tumorigenesis after long term CNS transplantation. Transplantation of NSC from these different sources has been shown by multiple investigators in different […]
Molecular Characterization of hESC and hIPSC-Derived Spinal Motor Neurons
One of the main objectives of stem cell biology is to create physiologically relevant cell types that can be used to either facilitate the study of or directly treat human disease. Tremendous progress towards these goals has been made in the area of motor neuron disease and spinal cord injury through the findings that motor […]