Spinal coed injury is a kind of severe central nervous system injury, able to lead to loss of sensory and motor functions below the injury plane of victims, and there is no effective clinical therapy now. The regenerative restoration after the spinal cord injury has always been the popular and difficult point in thw field of regenerative restoration medical. The team led by Professor Jianqing Gao of CPS-ZJU develops the localized implant system of functional bracket-carrying MSC in the previous study to be applied to curing spinal cord injury, and it has drawn increasing attention since the system could promote the nervous regeneration and fuctional restoration of spinal cord. However, the molecular machine of MSC localized implant system curing spinal cord injury is still a mystery remaining to be explored.

On Janurary 1st, 2024, Jianqing Gao, Professor of Institute of Pharmaceutical Preparation, ZJU, and Jiajia Wang, researcher of Center for Drug Safety Evaluation and Research, jointly pubished the paper, titled "Initial IL-10 production dominates the therapy of mesenchymal stem cell scaffold in spinal cord injury" on Theranostics online, indicating the machine of IL-10-dominated MSC localized implant system promoting the restoration of spinal cord, which provides theoretical evidence for stem cell therapy of spinal cord injury.

The research establishes a kind of cell adhesion peptide-modified HA bracket with regular gel network structure and high pore distribution. The adhesion peptide modified by the bracket effectively carrying MSC, can raise its in-body survival and local retention in damaged areas and inhibition of inflammatory factor secretion and oxidative stress, thereby promoting the restoration of the injury. The research finds out that in the previous stage(1 to 4 days) of planting into the spinal cord, HA-MSC secretes massive IL-10 specifically. Further antibody neutralization of secreted IL-10 significantly increased inflammatory infiltration in the injured area, decreased BBB score, and inhibited motor function recovery and nerve regeneration in rats. This suggest that IL-10 secreted by MSC plays an important role in HA-MSC to promote the repair of injured spinal cord. In addition to the known role of IL-10 suppressing immunoinflammation in the spinal cord injury region, this study further elucidated the mechanism of action of IL-10 in promoting the secretion of anti-inflammatory factors in MSCs and the migration of MSCs by transcriptome sequencing and in vivo and ex vivo experiments.

More information: Jianqing Gao, Professor of CPS-ZJU and Jiajia Wang, Distinguished Fellow of CPS-ZJU are the co-corresponding authors, PhD Lijun Yang and Doctor Jian Cao are the first authors.

Translator: Zihao Liu

Editor: Yichen Zhu