Human Nose Cells used to Treat Spinal Cord Injury
The spinal cord is hugely fragile and well-protected within a sheath of bone and cartilage. Damage done to the spinal cord can be particularly devastating, not only because of damage done at the moment of injury, but also due to the inflammatory response which follows.
Treatment for such injuries is currently very limited (the standard treatment is an injection of steroids to suppress the inflammatory response), but experimental treatments are promising. The use of stem cells to regenerate destroyed nerve tissue is under investigation in many institutes, but recently, an entirely novel approach was investigated by researchers at the Neural Injury Research Unit at the University of New South Wales in Australia: the use of nose cells.
The research, which was presented for the first time at the Society for Neuroscience Conference in Washington, DC earlier in 2008, involved harvesting of human olfactory cells, and the transplantation of these cells into the injured spinal cords of rats.
The cells used in the work were Olfactory ensheathing glia, a special type of nasal cell which, in the human body, act as “guides” for nerve fibers which extend from the nose to the brain. The special properties of these cells may mean they are capable of acting as guides to new growths of nerve cells following an injury.
According to Dr Catherine Gorrie of the Neural Injury Research Unit, the rats which were treated with the human olfactory cells showed significant improvements in their hind limb function.
The rats were given the cell transplant a week after sustaining a spinal cord injury – in accordance with previous results from the unit which indicated that delaying transplantation by a week was more effective than transplanting cells immediately following the injury.
One of the particular advantages of using olfactory cells, Gorrie notes, is that they are easily accessible. Harvesting stem cells, for example, is more difficult and time-consuming than harvesting cells from the nose. This means it’s a relatively easy procedure to harvest nose cells from a patient, treat them in vitro to activate them in a particular way, and then reinject those cells back into the patient – thereby eliminating the risk of rejection.
References and Further Reading
National Institute of Health Medline Plus: Spinal Cord
Mayo Clinic: The Nervous System
Iwatsuki K, Yoshimine T, Kishima H, Aoki M, Yoshimura K, Ishihara M, Ohnishi Y, Lima C. Transplantation of olfactory mucosa following spinal cord injury promotes recovery in rats. Neuroreport. 2008 Aug 27;19 (13):1249-52.
