Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2020. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Stem Cells. Dec 26, 2020; 12(12): 1591-1602
Published online Dec 26, 2020. doi: 10.4252/wjsc.v12.i12.1591
Spinal cord injury regeneration using autologous bone marrow-derived neurocytes and rat embryonic stem cells: A comparative study in rats
Mir Sadat-Ali, Dakheel A Al-Dakheel, Ayesha Ahmed, Haifa A Al-Turki, Abdallah S Al-Omran, Sadananda Acharya, Methal I Al-Bayat
Mir Sadat-Ali, Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University and King Fahd Hospital of the University, Dammam 31952, Saudi Arabia
Dakheel A Al-Dakheel, Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, AlKhobar 31952, Saudi Arabia
Ayesha Ahmed, Methal I Al-Bayat, Department of Pathology, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam 31952, Saudi Arabia
Haifa A Al-Turki, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam 31142, Saudi Arabia
Abdallah S Al-Omran, Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University and King Fahd Hospital of the University, AlKhobar 31952, Saudi Arabia
Sadananda Acharya, Department of Public Health, College of Public Health, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam 31441, Saudi Arabia
Author contributions: All authors participated equally from the inception to operative work, culturing neurocytes and histology.
Supported by King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, Riyadh vide, No. 10-MED1091-46.
Institutional animal care and use committee statement: The Committee of the Animal Care of the IAU gave the approval and monitored the study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors have no conflicts of interest related to the manuscript.
Data sharing statement: The data are available for review at the dsr@iau.edu.sa.
ARRIVE guidelines statement: The authors have read the ARRIVE guidelines, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the ARRIVE guidelines.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (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: Mir Sadat-Ali, BM BCh, FRCS (Gen Surg), MBBS, MSc, PhD, Full Professor, Doctor, Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University and King Fahd Hospital of the University, PO Box 40071, Dammam 31952, Saudi Arabia. drsadat@hotmail.com
Received: March 21, 2020
Peer-review started: March 21, 2020
First decision: August 22, 2020
Revised: August 24, 2020
Accepted: November 12, 2020
Article in press: November 12, 2020
Published online: December 26, 2020
Abstract
BACKGROUND

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is an important cause of traumatic paralysis and is mainly due to motor vehicle accidents. However, there is no definite treatment for spinal cord damage.

AIM

To assess the outcome of rat embryonic stem cells (rESC) and autologous bone marrow-derived neurocytes (ABMDN) treatment in iatrogenic SCI created in rats, and to compare the efficacy of the two different cell types.

METHODS

The study comprised 45 male Wistar rats weighing between 250 and 300 g, which were divided into three groups, the control, rESC and ABMDN groups. The anesthetized animals underwent exposure of the thoracic 8th to lumbar 1st vertebrae. A T10-thoracic 12th vertebrae laminectomy was performed to expose the spinal cord. A drop-weight injury using a 10 g weight from a height of 25 cm onto the exposed spinal cord was conducted. The wound was closed in layers. The urinary bladder was manually evacuated twice daily and after each evacuation Ringer lactate 5 mL/100 g was administered, twice daily after each bladder evacuation for the first 7 postoperative days. On the 10th day, the rats underwent nerve conduction studies and behavioral assessment [Basso, Beattie, Brenham (BBB)] to confirm paraplegia. Rat embryonic stem cells, ABMDN and saline were injected on the 10th day. The animals were euthanized after 8 wk and the spinal cord was isolated, removed and placed in 2% formalin for histopathological analysis to assess the healing of neural tissues at the axonal level.

RESULTS

All the animals tolerated the procedure well. The BBB scale scoring showed that at the end of the first week no recovery was observed in the groups. Post-injection, there was a strong and significant improvement in rats receiving rESC and ABMDN as compared to the control group based on the BBB scale, and the Train-of-four-Watch SX acceleromyography device exhibited statistically significant (P < 0.0001) regeneration of neural tissue after SCI. Histological evaluation of the spinal cord showed maximum vacuolization and least gliosis in the control group compared to the rESC and ABMDN treated animals. In the ABMDN group, limited vacuolization and more prominent gliosis were observed in all specimens as compared to the control and rESC groups.

CONCLUSION

This study provided strong evidence to support that transplantation of rESC and ABMDN can improve functional recovery after iatrogenic SCI. The transplanted cells showed a beneficial therapeutic effect when compared to the control group.

Keywords: Spinal cord injury, Regeneration, Embryonic stem cells, Autologous bone marrow-derived neurocytes, Iatrogenic, Stem cells

Core Tip: We performed a comparative study of rats with iatrogenic SCI treated with control, rat embryonic stem cells and autologous bone marrow-derived neurocytes. Regeneration was assessed using three classic parameters and it was found that neurocytes were superior in the regeneration process.