| Abstract No.: | 212 |
| Country: | Canada |
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| Title: | NEURAL STEM CELLS FOR REPAIR OF SPINAL CORD INJURY |
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| Authors/Affiliations: | 1 Soheila Karimi*;
1 Toronto Western Hospital, ON, Canada
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| Content: | Injuries to the adult mammalian spinal cord are associated with permanent loss of neurons and glia leading to enduring functional impairment. Inherently, spinal cord has limited capacity to adequately replace its lost neurons and oligodendrocytes, remyelinate the spared demyelinated axons, regenerate the damaged axons and reestablish the neural circuitry and functional connections after spinal cord injury (SCI). Therefore, cell replacement is an essential part of the repair mechanisms and rapid progress in neural stem/progenitor cell (NPCs) biology have provided a tremendous possibility for the cell-based repair strategies for spinal cord injury (SCI). This talk will address the recent advances in the therapeutic use of adult NPCs transplants for the repair of injured/diseased spinal cord. Furthermore, the talk will discuss how NPC transplantation strategy can be combined with the in vivo delivery of growth factors and anti-inflammatory approaches to significantly increase the long-term survival of transplanted NPCs in the injured spinal cord and direct their fate towards an oligodendrocyte lineage to successfully promote remyelination of the axons and reestablish the normal molecular architecture of axonal membrane associated with functional recovery. The talk will conclude with a discussion of the obstacles that challenge the NPC-based approaches for the treatment of chronic SCI and introduce the combinatorial approaches that could optimize the reparative capacities of NPCs in more established lesions.
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