Mesenchymal stem cells in the treatment of spinal cord injuries: A review

Table 2 Overview of effects of Adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal cells after spinal cord injury

Source of MSC	Main pathological features improved/repaired	Limitations/recommendations/conclusions	Ref.
Human	Functional recovery	Interaction between engrafted rATSC-OPCs and endogenous spinal cord-derived NPCs promotes host injury repair	Kang et al[58], 2006
Human	Improvement in both the cell survival and the gene expression of the engineered NSC observed in SCI rats	Hypoxia preconditioning strategy and combined stem cell/gene therapies can be used to augment the therapeutic efficacy at target injury sites	Oh et al[62], 2010
Human	mNSCs transplanted into rat spinal cords with AT-MSCs showed better survival rates than mNSCs transplanted alone	Co-transplantation of mNSCs with AT-MSCs may be a more effective transplantation protocol to improve the survival of cells in the injured cord	Oh et al[63], 2011
Human	Transplantation of 3DCM-ASCs into the injured spinal cord significantly elevated the density of vascular formations and enhanced axonal outgrowth at the lesion site, functional recovery	Transplantation of 3DCM-ASCs may be an effective stem cell therapy	Oh et al[64], 2012
Human	No toxicity of hAdMSCs in immunodeficient mice, none of 8 male patients developed any serious adverse events related to hAdMSC transplantation in phase I clinical trial	Systemic transplantation of hAdMSCs appears to be safe and does not induce tumor development. Slow intravenous infusion of autologous hAdMSCs may be safe in SCI patients	Ra et al[66], 2011
Human	Increase in BDNF levels, increased angiogenesis, preserved axons, decreased numbers of ED1-positive macrophages, reduced lesion cavity formation, functional recovery in rats	Compared with hBMSCs, hADSCs may be a better source of MSCs for cell therapy for acute SCI because of their relative abundance and accessibility	Zhou et al[67], 2013
Dog	Significant improvement in nerve conduction velocity based on SEP, partial improvement in neurological functions of dogs	ASCs in spinal cord injuries might be partially due to neural differentiation of implanted stem cells	Ryu et al[61], 2009
Dog	Anti-inflammation, anti-astrogliosis, neuronal extension, neuronal regeneration, functional recovery	The combination of Matrigel and NMSC produced beneficial effects	Park et al[65], 2012
Rat	Reduced apoptotic cell death, astrogliosis and hypo-myelination, functional recovery	ATSC extracts may provide a powerful autoplastic therapy for neurodegenerative conditions in humans	Kang et al[59], 2007
Rat	Neural differentiated ADSCs did not result in better functional recovery than undifferentiated ones following SCI	In vitro neural transdifferentiation of ADSCs might therefore not be a necessary pre-transplantation step	Zhang et al[60], 2009
Rat	Functional recovery	Predifferentiation of ASCs plays a beneficial role in SCI repair	Arboleda et al[57], 2011
Rat	Axonal regeneration, remyelination, functional recovery	Adipose tissue-derived Schwann cells can support axon regeneration and enhance functional recovery	Zaminy et al[68], 2013

OPCs: Oligodendrocyte precursor cells; NPCs: Neural progenitor cells; NSC: Neural stem cell; SCI: Spinal cord injury; MSC: Marrow stromal cell; AT: Adipose tissue; 3DCM-ASCs: Three-dimensional cell mass transplantation of adipose-derived stem cells; hAdMSCs: Human Adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells; NMSC: Neural-induced mesenchymal stem cells; ATSC: Adipose tissue stromal cell; ADSCs: Adipose tissue-derived stromal cells; BMSC: Bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cell.