Neural Regen Res
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Review
Multimodal treatment for spinal cord injury: a sword of neuroregeneration upon neuromodulation.
Spinal cord injury is linked to the interruption of neural pathways, which results in irreversible neural dysfunction. Neural repair and neuroregeneration are critical goals and issues for rehabilitation in spinal cord injury, which require neural stem cell repair and multimodal neuromodulation techniques involving personalized rehabilitation strategies. Besides the involvement of endogenous stem cells in neurogenesis and neural repair, exogenous neural stem cell transplantation is an emerging effective method for repairing and replacing damaged tissues in central nervous system diseases. ⋯ These treatments have the potential to help millions of patients suffering from motor dysfunction caused by spinal cord injury. However, large-scale clinical trials need to be conducted to validate their efficacy. This review evaluated the efficacy of neural stem cells and magnetic or electrical stimulation combined with rehabilitation training and intelligent therapies for spinal cord injury according to existing evidence, to build up a multimodal treatment strategy of spinal cord injury to enhance nerve repair and regeneration.
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Human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (hUC-MSCs) support revascularization, inhibition of inflammation, regulation of apoptosis, and promotion of the release of beneficial factors. Thus, they are regarded as a promising candidate for the treatment of intractable spinal cord injury (SCI). Clinical studies on patients with early chronic SCI (from 2 months to 1 year post-injury), which is clinically common, are rare; therefore, we will conduct a prospective, multicenter, randomized, placebo-controlled, single-blinded clinical trial at the Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, and Shanghai East Hospital, Tongji University School of Medicine, China. ⋯ This study was approved by the Stem Cell Research Ethics Committee of the Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, China (approval No. [2018]-02) on March 30, 2018, and was registered with ClinicalTrials.gov (registration No. NCT03521323) on April 12, 2018. The revised trial protocol (protocol version 4.0) was approved by the Stem Cell Research Ethics Committee of the Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, China (approval No. [2019]-10) on February 25, 2019, and released on ClinicalTrials.gov on April 29, 2019.