Antibody to remove damaged spinal cord

2008/01/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Medikuntza

Stanford University of California has found a pathway that could prevent treatment prior to spinal cord transplants. They have used a special antibody that removes stem cells from the spinal cord of mice and makes room for new stem cells to be introduced into the transplant.

In fact, the patient's spinal cord must first be removed in order to later introduce the new one. For this purpose, chemotherapy and/or radiation treatments are applied to eliminate both immune cells that may attack new incoming stem cells, and defective spinal cord cells. These treatments also have side effects such as hair loss, discomfort, etc.

However, the experiment presented by this team at Stanford University does not require such treatment and therefore there are no such side effects. They used an antibody that knows and removes stem cells from the spinal cord of mice. Mouse spinal cord stem cells decreased by 98% in eight days. That is, it made enough space for the new stem cells to transplant. Six months after transplantation, 90% of the immune system cells in mice were produced by transplanted stem cells.

They managed to do it with the mouse. Now it's about looking for an antibody that has the same influence on humans.