Dai Jianwu's research group NSR published a summary of its series of research results on the reconstruction of spinal cord injury regenerative micro-environment

spinal cord injury (Spinal cord injury, SCI) often results in loss of movement and sensory function below the injury plane. The repair of spinal cord injury is a worldwide medical problem. The team of regenerative medicine led by Dai Jianwu of the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has made important research progress in the study of regenerative microenvironment reconstruction after spinal cord injury for 17 years.
spinal cord injury triggers a series of bio-chemical cascading reactions that create a micro-environment around the injury that inhibits nerve regeneration. Several signaling molecules in this micro-environment have been found by different scientists to inhibit neuron axon regeneration, and Dai Jianwu's team found in 2008 that there are signal molecules in the micro-environment of spinal cord injury that inhibit the differentiation of neural stem cells to neurons. Dai Jianwu's team has been working for many years to reconstruct the spinal cord regenerative micro-environment with functional biomass. They broke through the key core technologies of the development of regenerative medicine products and developed "functional biological materials that can guide the specific binding of growth factors for tissue regeneration" and "functional collagen biological materials that can bind stem cells transplanted in vitro with bodies that capture stem cells in the body". The reconstruction of the regenerative micro-environment after spinal cord injury by the above functional biological materials was studied by the animal model system of full transverse spinal cord injury in rats and big dogs, and a number of original results were obtained, which were found to inhibit the formation of scars after injury, guide the orderly regeneration of nerve nerves, promote the differentiation of neural stem cells, and promote the recovery of sensory and motor function.
they also revealed the mechanism by which functional biomass transplants repair transverse spinal cord injuries. It was found that functional biological materials can reconstruct the regenerative micro-environment, antagonizing the neuroregenerative inhibition of myelin protein, thus inducing the differentiation of endologic or transplanted neural stem cells to neurons. These new neurons form nerve bridges through the damaged area, conducting nerve signals and promoting the recovery of nerve function in animals with transverse spinal cord injuries. Dai Jianwu researchers believe that the neural bridge formed by neurons produced by endologic or external neural stem cells is the main mechanism for repairing transverse spinal cord injury based on functional biological materials.
Dai Jianwu's regenerative medicine team conducted the first international clinical study of neurogenic collagen stent combined with cell transplantation to treat stale complete spinal cord injury on January 16, 2015. Scar tissue was cleaned and neuroregenerative collagen stents were transplanted for the first time during surgery, and the first 5 patients did not find serious adverse reactions associated with scar clean-up and neuroregenerative collagen stent transplantation after 1 year of safety assessment. They established strict criteria for determining the completeness of acute spinal cord injury, and on April 22, 2015, they conducted a clinical study on functional biomass transplantation for the treatment of acute complete spinal cord injury. Some patients with acute complete spinal cord injury showed more obvious improvements in motor function and stool sensation after surgery. Improvements in sensory and motor function and the recovery of nerve conduction were also found in patients with complete obsolescative impairment. In the past three years, they have carried out clinical research on spinal cord injury, which has been included in more than 70 cases of stale and acute complete spinal cord injury, and the preliminary results of this clinical study on regenerative repair of spinal cord injury from functional biomass transplantation, which is currently the largest sample size in the world, show that functional biomass transplantation can be used as a safe clinical method for regenerative micro-environment in patients with spinal cord injury, showing good clinical application prospects.
review was published in
(DOI:10.1093/nsr/nwx057) by Chen Bing, Xiao Zhifeng and Zhao Yannan. This research is supported by projects such as the Leading Science and Technology Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Key Deployment Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. (Source: Science.com)