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World J Exp Med. Aug 20, 2016; 6(3): 58-62
Published online Aug 20, 2016. doi: 10.5493/wjem.v6.i3.58
Selected suitable seed cell, scaffold and growth factor could maximize the repair effect using tissue engineering method in spinal cord injury
Wen-Chen Ji, Xiao-Wei Zhang, Yu-Sheng Qiu
Wen-Chen Ji, Xiao-Wei Zhang, Yu-Sheng Qiu, Department of Orthopedics, the First Affiliated Hospital of Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710061, Shaanxi Province, China
Author contributions: Ji WC designed the study and wrote the manuscript; Zhang XW guided the experiment; Qiu YS modified the grammar and guided the thesis writing.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflicts of interest regarding this manuscript.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Wen-Chen Ji, MD, Department of Orthopedics, the First Affiliated Hospital of Xi’an Jiaotong University, No.277, Yanta west Road, Xi’an 710061, Shaanxi Province, China. jiwenchenbaoyan@163.com
Telephone: +86-29-85323935 Fax: +86-29-85323930
Received: February 15, 2016
Peer-review started: February 16, 2016
First decision: March 24, 2016
Revised: March 30, 2016
Accepted: May 31, 2016
Article in press: June 2, 2016
Published online: August 20, 2016
Processing time: 184 Days and 14.7 Hours
Abstract

Spinal cord injury usually leads to permanent disability, which could cause a huge financial problem to the patient. Up to now there is no effective method to treat this disease. The key of the treatment is to enable the damage zone axonal regeneration and luckily it could go through the damage zone; last a connection can be established with the target neurons. This study attempts to combine stem cell, material science and genetic modification technology together, by preparing two genes modified adipose-derived stem cells and inducing them into neuron direction; then by compositing them on the silk fibroin/chitosan scaffold and implanting them into the spinal cord injury model, seed cells can have features of neuron cells. At the same time, it could stably express the brain-derived neurotrophic factor and neurotrophin-3, both of which could produce synergistic effects, which have a positive effect on the recovery of spinal cord. The spinal cord scaffold bridges the broken end of the spinal cord and isolates with the surrounding environment, which could avoid a scar effect on the nerve regeneration and provide three-dimensional space for the seed cell growth, and at last we hope to provide a new treatment for spinal cord injury with the tissue engineering technique.

Keywords: Tissue engineering; Seed cell; Scaffold; Growth factor; Spinal cord injury

Core tip: Spinal cord injury is a thorny disease to doctors. Tissue engineering including three core contents-seed cells, scaffolds and growth factors - is a promising method to cure this disease. Selecting suitable factors and maximizing the repairing effect is very important. This article is a hypothesis to choose the suitable factor which hopes to build up a promising method to treat spinal cord injury.