Cell therapy for adult infarction

Abstract

It was believed that neurogenesis does not occur in the adult brain and stroke causes permanent neurological damage without a chance of functional recovery. Recently, accumulating evidences suggest that neurogenesis occurs even in the adult brain and patients may have a chance for functional recovery after stroke. Although most stroke-induced neural stem cells cannot survive in the poststroke brain, we demonstrated that therapeutic angiogenesis after stroke, obtained by intravenous administration of hematopoietic stem cells, supports survival of stroke-induced neural stem cells, followed by functional recovery, in an experimental stroke model. Based on these observations, we conducted a phase 1/2a clinical trial of bone marrow mononuclear cell transplantation in adult patients with cerebral ischemia. This chapter summarizes the current findings observed in an experimental stroke model regarding cell therapy to enhance function recovery and introduces our clinical trial using autologous bone marrow mononuclear cells for adult patients with cerebral infarction. We also refer to a future strategy of cell therapy that aims to support ideal regenerative process after stroke in the adult brain.