Researchers from Rochester, N.Y., and Colorado have revealed that manipulating stem cells prior to transplantation may lead to improved spinal cord repair methods.

This would help victims of paralysis to recover without the risk of transplant-induced pain syndromes.

The research team focussed their study on astrocytes cells that play a major role in the central nervous system.

When nerve fibres are injured in the spinal cord, the severed ends of the nerve fibres fail to regenerate and reconnect with the nervous system circuitry beyond the site of the injury.

During early development, astrocytes are highly supportive of nerve fibre growth, and scientists believe that if properly directed, these cells could play a key role in regenerating damaged nerves in the spinal cord.

Rather than transplanting naive stem cells, the team has adopted an approach of pre-differentiating stem cells into better-defined populations of brain cells. These are then selected for their ability to promote recovery.

The Rochester team used glial restricted precursor (GRP) cells - a population of stem cells that can give rise to several different types of brain cell that were induced to make two different astrocyte sub-types using different growth factors that promote cell formation during normal development.

The two types of astrocytes thus created were transplanted into the injured spinal cords of rats by the research team consisting Stephen Davies, Ph.D. and Jeannette Davies, Ph.D. They found dramatically different outcomes