Cell Therapy and Gene Therapy in Spinal Cord Injuries

Stem cells are counts as a promising tool for treating spinal cord injury (SCI), due to their high proliferation and self-renewal capacities. Many advances in the field of gene therapy and in particular cell therapy of SCI have been made at three levels of experimental, pre-clinical, and clinical practice, owing to the multiple capabilities of stem cells. But, in order to find a therapeutic approach to ultimately reach the clinical level, a number of barriers, such as ethical, tumorigenicity, immune rejection, differentiation to non-intended cells, and clinical-trial-associated problems must be resolved. Many strategies for optimization of the route, location, and time of cell administration have also been developed in this field. Literature reveals that mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have the most prominent benefit for clinical applications, compared with other types of stem cells. However, it appears that the recent method of in-vitro trans-differentiation of somatic cells has the potential to substitute the current beneficial MSC transplantation method, in the near future. According to the complex pathophysiology of SCI, the combination therapies (that is simultaneous application of different treatment approaches such as cell therapy, gene therapy, simultaneous application of several types of cells in combination with nanomaterial scaffolds, and ...) are considered to be more useful in SCI treatments rather than single therapies. Finally, it should be noted that due to the safety problems attributed to cell and gene therapy application, patients are not recommended to participate in experimental treatments other than formal clinical trials.