Stem cell based strategies for spinal cord injury repair.

As our understanding and ability to direct the differentiation of stem cells grows, specific targets and strategies to incorporate them are essential to define. Any cell-based transplantation strategy is fundamentally a combination therapy as either phenotypic or trophic mechanisms may contribute to functional recovery of the injured spinal cord. Both the transplant population as well as the recipient site will guide the growth factor expression profile and the phenotype of the transplanted cells. Although the use of high purity populations derived from stem cells will result in more regulated repair mechanisms, multiple challenges to the use of stem cell based strategies for SCI remain.