A team of scientists from the Yale School of Medicine and the Department of Biology at the University of Pisa in Italy has identified a specific stem cell population, known as neuroepithelial stem cells, which have proved to be particularly effective in the repair in animal models of spinal cord injury. The experiment demonstrated that these cells are able to integrate within the damaged tissue, extend processes by a few centimeters after the transplant, and offer motor and functional recovery in the animals subjected to the treatment. Furthermore, as the laboratory tests showed, recovery is proportionate to the extent of the injury: if, for example, the spinal cord damage is not higher than 25%, there is a significant improvement in the use of the lower limbs within two months. “Thanks to this study, it has been demonstrated for the first time that the anatomical origin of stem cells is of vital importance to the success of transplants,” explains Marco Onorati, PhD, a researcher from the University of Pisa and one of the first authors of the study published online on August 24, 2018 in Nature Communications. The open-access article is titled “Human Neuroepithelial Stem Cell Regional Specificity Enables Spinal Cord Repair Through a Relay Circuit.” In fact, while similar in vitro, the neural stem cells which have the same origin as the recipient tissue (in this case the spinal cord) turned out to be much more efficient than those with a diverse origin (for example derived from the brain) at re-establishing connections with the damaged area and guaranteeing the formation of new neuronal circuits. “Not all stem cells have the same potential,” concludes Dr. Onorati, “and the knowledge we now have, thanks to this study on neuroepithelial stem cells and how they react in the case of spinal cord injury, could prove to be useful for future research.”
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