Role of Endogenous Neural Stem Cells in Spinal Cord Injury and Repair

Spinal cord injury is followed by glial scar formation, which has positive and negative effects on recovery from the lesion. More than half of the astrocytes in the glial scar are generated by ependymal cells, the neural stem cells in the spinal cord. We recently demonstrated that the neural stem cell–derived scar component has several beneficial functions, including restricting tissue damage and neural loss after spinal cord injury. This finding identifies endogenous neural stem cells as a potential therapeutic target for treatment of spinal cord injury.