Abstract:

BACKGROUND: The neural stem cell gene therapy proposed for sports rehabilitation and treatment of spinal cord injury provides a broad application prospects and challenges.
OBJECTIVE: To review proliferation and differentiation of neural stem cells as well as neural stem cells gene therapy effect on exercise-induced spinal cord injury.
METHODS: Medline, VIP, and CNKI databases (1991-01/2010-12) were retrieved for articles about neural stem cell gene therapy for exercise-induced spinal cord injury. The keywords were “neural stem cells, gene therapy, exercise spinal cord injury, gene modification, gene transfection” in English, and “neural stem cells, spinal cord injury, gene therapy” in Chinese. Repetitive and old papers were excluded, and the other papers were organized and analyzed using induction and deduction methods.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Through modification of neurotrophic factors, proliferation, differentiation and transplantation, the neural stem cell gene therapy can replace necrotic and apoptotic nerve cells in the damaged area and a large number of neurotrophic factors were secreted to improve the local micro-environment for the reconstruction of neural pathways, such as the proliferation of new neurons to promote exercise-induced spinal cord injury. Meanwhile, the neural stem cell gene therapy applied to exercise-induced spinal cord injury also faces with enormous challenges, including whether the neural stem cell gene therapy is mature, high-stable transgenic expression, and other relevant problems, which still need basic research and clinical trials to be addressed.