జర్నల్ ఆఫ్ స్టెమ్ సెల్ రీసెర్చ్ & థెరపీ

నైరూప్య

Functional Recovery of Spinal Cord Injury Following Application of Intralesional Bone Marrow Mononuclear Cells Embedded in Polymer Scaffold - Two Year Follow-up in a Canine

Justin Benjamin William, Rajamanickam Prabakaran, Subbu Ayyappan, Haridass Puskhinraj, Dhananjaya Rao, Sadananda Rao Manjunath, Paramasivam Thamaraikannan, Vidyasagar Devaprasad Dedeepiya, Satoshi Kuroda, Hiroshi Yoshioka, Yuichi Mori, Senthilkumar Preethy and Samuel JK Abraham

Background: Bone marrow derived pluripotent stem cells hold a great promise for therapeutic repair of injured central nervous system. This report is on a six- month old paraplegic Boxer breed canine with traumatic spinal cord injury at the level of T12, which functionally recovered following intralesional transplantation of autologous Bone Marrow Mono Nuclear Cells (BMMNCs) seeded on a Thermoreversible gelation polymer (TGP) combined with intravenous Cell Transplantation. Materials and Methods: Thirty ml of Bone Marrow was aspirated and BMMNCs were isolated. From the total BMMNCs isolated, 20 x 106 cells were seeded in 1.5 ml of TGP and implanted at the site of injuredspinal cord. A fraction of BMMNCs isolated were stored at -80deg C from which 4.16 x 106 BMMNCs were thawed and transfused intravenously by suspending in 2ml saline on the 19th post-operative day. The animal was followed up by assessment every two weeks for a period of two years. Results: Recovery of motor and sensory functions were noticed on the 53rd day, attempt for standing on the 79th day and ambulation on the 98th day after the initial cell transplantation. The animal had satisfactory ambulation on the 133rd day and thereafter the life style of the animal was gradually restored to normalcy. Status quo of this recovery has been maintained for the past two years. Conclusion: The outcome proves the safety of intralesional transplantation of autologous BMMNCs embedded in TGP in spinal cord injury and makes us recommend the same for more number of similar cases.