Abstract
Stem cells or progenitors derived from non-neural samples as well as the neural tissues in humans are thought to be a good candidate for the regenerative medicine in central nervous system (CNS) diseases. The characteristics of these stem cells are high proliferating potential and multipotential. They showed good adaptation in the host CNS, migrated through the normal and damaged brain tissue, and differentiated upon the host microenvironment subsequent to transplantation. These characteristics seem to be very useful to establish a cell therapy for CNS diseases.
A distinct advantage of a stem cell therapy using autologous bone marrow for CNS diseases such as stroke is a longer therapeutic time window, whereas the majority of the present treatments for stroke have an interventional time window of only hours. The present project will be able to represent a novel technology for a therapeutic strategy for CNS diseases including stroke. Given the severity and frequency of stroke, such an approach could have a very significant impact on the medical, social and economical consequences.