Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Neural stem cells (NSCs) are characterized by widely resources, convenient harvesting, easy culture and prone to import and express exogenous genes, which can be served as carriers of gene therapy for neural system disease.
OBJECTIVE: To review the application of NSCs in spinal cord injury.
METHODS: Databases of PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed) and Wanfang (http://www.wanfangdata.com.cn) were searched by the correspondence author using key words of “neural stem cells, spinal cord injury, cellular transplantation” both in English and Chinese to retrieve papers concerning isolation, identification, differentiation of NSCs as well as its application in repairing spinal cord injury. A total of 82 documents were initial obtained by computer, after repetitive studies were excluded, 23 papers were included in the final analysis. 
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: The NSCs transplantation has been widely used in animal experiments. Currently, the applications of NSCs in repairing spinal cord injury are concentrated on the following aspects: Firstly, cellular replacement therapy, namely, direct transplanting NSCs or activating in vivo NSCs to differentiate into neurons and glial cells, and then integrating transplanted cells with the existed neural cellular structure to cure the disease. Secondly, NSCs were utilized as gene carriers, which carrying target gene to body and reach the aims of cellular replacement and gene therapy. Thirdly, autologous NSCs were induced differentiation for self neural repair via studying growth factors and cytokines.