Spinal Cord Injuries

Spinal Cord Injuries (SCI) are critical and often cause permanent damage to the victim of them. Some of the most common causes of SCI are motor vehicle accidents, sport accidents, and falls. When a SCI occurs many things can be effected- in some cases the spinal cord is compressed this causes the cells that are in that crushed area to die, it causes the area to swell and loose a significant amount of fluid and blood- it may also cause the blood vessels surrounding the injury to have a spasm, reducing the flow of blood. These effects are just a few of what can happen when the spinal cord is injured. Cells in the spinal cord when it is compressed will leak out into the extracellular matrix and inhibitory molecules that then create a glial …show more content…
Transplanting in testing models have shown great improvements by protection of the nerves and restoration of tissue, by means of regeneration. Research has been done on fetal spinal cord grafted into the injury site can help the regrowth of host axons therefore promoting regeneration and some recovery. A few of the other stem cell strategies in recovery for SCI are ES cells, Mesenchymal Stem Cells, Neural stem cells, and induced pluripotent stem cells. Other cell types have also been looked at to assist in the recovery process when transplanted such as Schwann cells, Olfactory ensheathing glia, genetically modified neurotrophin-expressing fibroblasts, and activated macrophages. Stem cell transplant of neurons is beneficial by causing regeneration of axons which then helps with preservation of the glial cells, stem cell transplant also increases, remyelination, regeneration of synapses, and neuronal circuitry. Embryonic Stem Cells have shown to be advantageous in SCI treatment due them being able to maintain high telomerase activity. Although some have ethical issues with using Embryonic Stem Cells, and they also have a high chance of tumor development therefore producing nonneural …show more content…
The disadvantages of HSC’s is that they are very rare and may be in danger of graft rejection. But in contrast HSC’s showed promotion of functional healing after a compressed SCI in mice. Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells are created by reprogramming cells so that they are pluripotent. These cells are easily accessed from skin from the pt with a SCI and then differentiated to be pluripotent and then transplanted. These cells can also be generated from adult somatic cells. This find was a huge development in stem cell biology in that if adult somatic cells could be generated from this use then that prevents embryos from having to be used for this purpose. Direct conversion to neural cells is the last stem cell treatment for SCI I will discuss in this essay- it was found that it is possible to convert a cell into a different cell type without having to go through the pluripotent stage. An example of this is hematopoietic cells were created directly from dermal fibroblasts without having to go through a stage that made it pluripotent by transcription. Although the neuronal cells that were converted in this way had a small epigenetic memory of their original cell type they switched lineage fate rather than a introduction of hybrid

Show More