Adult-Derived Pluripotent Stem Cells

The global incidence of spinal cord injury (SCI) is 15–40 cases per million people, with the socioeconomic and healthcare costs amounting to nearly $10 billion per annum in the USA alone. Despite substantial advances in medical care and surgical technology, many patients with SCI still experience significant long-term neurologic disability. Cellular transplantation offers a promising therapy to address the multifactorial nature of SCI in both the subacute and chronic phase of the injury to promote central nervous system repair and regeneration and to augment existing therapies. Adult-derived stem cells are the least ethically challenging stem cells but, until recently, a major hurdle has been inducing pluripotency to generate the required neural lineages. Improved generation and transfection techniques, combined with positive experimental outcomes in SCI models, suggest that adult-derived induced pluripotent stem cells could be a genuine alternative to embryonic stem cells for clinical treatments. For translation from bench to bedside, the efficacy of induced pluripotent stem cell–derived neural stem and progenitor cells in suitable SCI models needs to be validated further and backed up with rigorous early-stage clinical trials.