A young paraplegic woman who underwent spinal stem cell therapy developed a growth in her back made up of nasal cells eight years later. The team from the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics that removed and investigated the growth has reported the anomaly in a paper published in the Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine. Although the case is a rare occurrence (the first of its kind, that we know of) the authors admit this may simply be because patients that undergo therapy are not monitored long enough, and either way it provides ample evidence attesting to our lack of understanding around programming and controlling stem cell proliferation and differentiation post-transplant. Human trials for this type of therapy are still at the very early stages, but animal trials have had some promising results. Several different types of cells have been experimented with for implantation including schwann cells (these surround nerves and sometimes grow on the spinal cord post-injury), foetal neural cells (with successes in rat studies) andnasal olfactory ensheathing cells (these are extracted from the lining of the nose and were the ones used in this particular case study). The patient in question was just 18 years old when she suffered … Continue reading →

Contact Information Available for logged-in reporters only Newswise Charlottesville, VA (July 8, 2014). A spinal mass was identified in a young woman with complete spinal cord injury 8 years after she had undergone implantation of olfactory mucosal cells in the hopes of regaining sensory and motor function. The case is reported and discussed in Autograft-derived spinal cord mass following olfactory mucosal cell transplantation in a spinal cord injury patient. Case report, by Brian J. Dlouhy, MD, Olatilewa Awe, MD, Rajesh C. Rao, MD, Patricia A. Kirby, MD, and Patrick W. Hitchon, MD, published today online, ahead of print, in the Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine (http://thejns.org/doi/full/10.3171/2014.5.SPINE13992). The authors state that this is the first report of a spinal cord mass arising from spinal cord cell transplantation and neural stem cell therapy, and they caution that physicians should be vigilant in their follow-up of patients who undergo stem cell interventions. In its natural state, the olfactory mucosa lines the roof of the nasal cavity, adjacent to the respiratory mucosa that lines the lower nasal cavity. In addition to smell receptor neurons, the olfactory mucosa contains progenitor cells (also known as adult stem cells) and olfactory ensheathing cellsboth of which have been shown … Continue reading →