Neural Regeneration Research ›› 2015, Vol. 10 ›› Issue (5): 726-742.doi: 10.4103/1673-5374.156966

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Advances in regenerative therapies for spinal cord injury: a biomaterials approach

Magdalini Tsintou 1, Kyriakos Dalamagkas 1, Alexander Marcus Seifalian 1, 2   

  1. 1 UCL Centre for Nanotechnology & Regenerative Medicine, Division of Surgery and Interventional Science, University College of London,
    London, UK
    2 Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust Hospital, London, UK
  • Received:2015-01-22 Online:2015-05-15 Published:2015-05-15
  • Contact: Alexander Marcus Seifalian, a.seifalian@gmail.com.
  • Supported by:

    This work was partially funded by the Program “IKY (Greek State Scholarships Foundation) Scholarships” from funds of the Operational Program “Education and Lifelong Learning”, of the European Social Fund (ESF) of the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF), 2007-2013. It was also partially funded by Scholarships from the A.G. Leventis Foundation, by a Scholarship from John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation and by a special Scholarship from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Thessaly (Greece).

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Abstract:

Spinal cord injury results in the permanent loss of function, causing enormous personal, social and economic problems. Even though neural regeneration has been proven to be a natural mechanism, central nervous system repair mechanisms are ineffective due to the imbalance of the inhibitory and excitatory factors implicated in neuroregeneration. Therefore, there is growing research interest on discovering a novel therapeutic strategy for effective spinal cord injury repair. To this direction, cell-based delivery strategies, biomolecule delivery strategies as well as scaffold-based therapeutic strategies have been developed with a tendency to seek for the answer to a combinatorial approach of all the above. Here we review the recent advances on regenerative/neural engineering therapies for spinal cord injury, aiming at providing an insight to the most promising repair strategies, in order to facilitate future research conduction.

Key words: tissue engineering, neuroregeneration, repair, central nervous system, biomaterial, regenerative medicine, nanotechnology, spinal cord injury