Journal
BRAIN
Volume 132, Issue -, Pages 1268-1276Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/brain/awp030
Keywords
dorsal horn; spinal cord; transplantation
Categories
Funding
- British Neurological Research Trust
- Spinal Research
- Henry Smith Charity
- UK Stem Cell Foundation
- David Nicholls Spinal Injury Foundation
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The incurability of spinal cord injury and subcortical strokes is due to the inability of nerve fibres to regenerate. One of the clearest clinical situations where failure of regeneration leads to a permanent functional deficit is avulsion of the brachial plexus. In current practice, surgical re-implantation of avulsed spinal roots provides a degree of motor recovery, but the patients neither recover sensation nor the use of the hand. In the present rat study, we show that transplantation of cultured adult olfactory ensheathing cells restores the sensory input needed for a complex, goal-directed fore-paw function and re-establishes synaptic transmission to the spinal grey matter and cuneate nucleus by providing a bridge for regeneration of severed dorsal root fibres into the spinal cord. Success in a first application of human olfactory ensheathing cells in clinical brachial plexus injury would open the way to the wider field of brain and spinal cord injuries.
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