2009 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Regenerative therapy for spinal cord avulsion injury and spine-related diseases.

Research Project

Project/Area Number	19791326
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Research Field	Plastic surgery
Research Institution	Tazuke Kofukai Medical Research Institute
Principal Investigator	SAITO Susumu Tazuke Kofukai Medical Research Institute, 医学研究所・第6研究部, 研究員 (00450239)
Project Period (FY)	2007 – 2009
Keywords	移植 / 再生医療 / 神経科学 / 脊髄引き抜き損傷
Research Abstract	We carried out a basic study for a regenerative therapy for the spinal cord avulsion injury, for which there has been no effective treatment by now. Neural stem cells, which were harvested from hippocampus tissue of rat fetuses, were induced via cerebrospinal fluid to the injured sites of the spinal cord and avulsed spinal roots of adult rats, and how these stem cells differentiate in that site was investigated immunohistochemistrically. As a result, infused neural stem cells were attached to, and integrated into, the lesions of the avulsion site. Most of these integrated cells displayed the immunoreactivity for S-100 protein and glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP). We concluded that the stem cells possibly differentiated to astrocytes in the lesions, however, differentiation to neurons was not observed in any avulsion-injury models of this study.