Opinion Reviews
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2019. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Stem Cells. Aug 26, 2019; 11(8): 452-463
Published online Aug 26, 2019. doi: 10.4252/wjsc.v11.i8.452
Neural regeneration by regionally induced stem cells within post-stroke brains: Novel therapy perspectives for stroke patients
Takayuki Nakagomi, Toshinori Takagi, Mikiya Beppu, Shinichi Yoshimura, Tomohiro Matsuyama
Takayuki Nakagomi, Institute for Advanced Medical Sciences, Hyogo College of Medicine, Nishinomiya, Hyogo 663-8501, Japan
Takayuki Nakagomi, Tomohiro Matsuyama, Department of Therapeutic Progress in Brain Diseases, Hyogo College of Medicine, Nishinomiya, Hyogo 663-8501, Japan
Toshinori Takagi, Mikiya Beppu, Shinichi Yoshimura, Department of Neurosurgery, Hyogo College of Medicine, Nishinomiya, Hyogo 663-8501, Japan
Author contributions: Nakagomi T, Yoshimura S, and Matsuyama T participated in the conception of the manuscript. Nakagomi T and Takagi T wrote the manuscript. Nakagomi T, Beppu M, and Matsuyama T generated the figures. Nakagomi T edited the manuscript. All authors have read the manuscript and approved the final version.
Supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI, No. 15K06723 and No. 18K07380.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Department of Therapeutic Progress in Brain Diseases is financially supported by Daiichi Sankyo Co., Ltd., Nippon Zoki Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., and CLEA Japan, Inc. The sponsors had no roles in this study, including those of study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, and manuscript writing.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Takayuki Nakagomi, MD, PhD, Professor, Institute for Advanced Medical Sciences, Department of Therapeutic Progress in Brain Diseases, Hyogo College of Medicine, 1-1 Mukogawacho, Nishinomiya, Hyogo, 663-8501, Japan. nakagomi@hyo-med.ac.jp
Telephone: +81-798-456821 Fax: +81-798-456823
Received: February 26, 2019
Peer-review started: February 27, 2019
First decision: June 5, 2019
Revised: July 4, 2019
Accepted: July 16, 2019
Article in press: July 16, 2019
Published online: August 26, 2019
Abstract

Ischemic stroke is a critical disease which causes serious neurological functional loss such as paresis. Hope for novel therapies is based on the increasing evidence of the presence of stem cell populations in the central nervous system (CNS) and the development of stem-cell-based therapies for stroke patients. Although mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) represented initially a promising cell source, only a few transplanted MSCs were present near the injured areas of the CNS. Thus, regional stem cells that are present and/or induced in the CNS may be ideal when considering a treatment following ischemic stroke. In this context, we have recently showed that injury/ischemia-induced neural stem/progenitor cells (iNSPCs) and injury/ischemia-induced multipotent stem cells (iSCs) are present within post-stroke human brains and post-stroke mouse brains. This indicates that iNSPCs/iSCs could be developed for clinical applications treating patients with stroke. The present study introduces the traits of mouse and human iNSPCs, with a focus on the future perspective for CNS regenerative therapies using novel iNSPCs/iSCs.

Keywords: Ischemic stroke, Stroke patients, Central nervous system, Neural stem/progenitor cells, Multipotent stem cells, Stem-cell-based therapies

Core tip: Ischemic stroke is a critical disease that is accompanied by serious symptoms, such as paresis. Until recently, it was believed that areas affected by stroke mainly consist of necrotic and inflammatory cells. However, we have recently demonstrated that novel ischemia-induced stem cells can be isolated from not only mouse brains after stroke but also human brains after stroke. These stem cells exhibited the multipotency and differentiated into electrophysiologically functional neurons. In this article, we introduce the future perspectives for patients suffering from ischemic stroke using these regionally derived stem cells.