Mesenchymal stem cell therapy improves motor performance in a rat excitotoxic spinal cord injury model

ZAPPA-VILLAR, MARÍA F.; VON WERNICH, MARTINA; PORTIANSKY, ENRIQUE; SISTI, MARÍA S.; CAMIÑA, AGUSTINA; NISHIDA, FABIÁN; ZANUZZI, CAROLINA N.; REGGIANI, PAULA C.

Mar del Plata

Congreso; XXXII Congress of the Argentine Society for Research in Neuroscience; 2017

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias (SAN)

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a very common tissue destroying condition that leads to permanent or temporal loss of motor and autonomic functions as well as sensory capacity of the organs innervated by the injured spinal cord segment. In recent years, mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) therapy has generated promising results due to their anti-inflammatory, immunomodulatory and neuroprotective properties, although their ability to functionally replace neurons and glial cells remains highly discussed. The goal of the present work was to determine whether intracerebroventricular injection of MSC modifies the behavioural performance of rats affected by an excitotoxic SCI model. Male Sprague Dawley rats were intraparenchymally injected with 1mM KA at the C5 cervical segment. Three days later, 10 µl of either MSC (6x103 cells/µl) or saline were injected by intracerebroventricular via into the fourth ventricle. Motor and sensitive abilities were evaluated at days 3, 7 and 14, post KA injection (pi). We found that sensory evaluation showed no significant difference between both groups at any day pi. However, motor performance was significantly better in KA-MSC animals than in KA-injected animals. Intracerebroventricular injection of MSC showed a beneficial motor effect on KA- injected animals, thus indicating a potential use of the MSC therapy on the rat excitotoxic spinal cord model. Further studies are needed to correlate clinical with possible morphological changes.