Jon and Louise Nicholson Spinal Cord Injury Scholarship

Modulating the inflammatory environment for stem cell therapy in SCI. The human spinal cord has limited capacity for spontaneous regeneration following spinal cord injury (SCI). Stem cell therapy is a favourable treatment approach for SCI to promote repair and regeneration. Unfortunately, the majority of stem cells typically die within hours of engraftment into the injured spinal cord, negatively impacting stem cell survival and therapeutic capacity. How and why stem cells do not survive within the hostile inflammatory tissue microenvironment of the injured spinal cord is not well understood. However, we now have evidence that particular immune cells populations that are increased after injury hinder the survival of stem cells. We have also shown that nalfurafune, a kappa opioid receptor agonist, can successfully change the inflammatory environment in spinal cord injury. We propose that nalfurafune can be used to change the spinal cord environment and promote stem cell survival. This project will use immunohistochemistry, flow cytometry and -omics analysis to test how nalfurafine changes specific immune cell populations and the lesion environment in both acute and chronic spinal cord injury and how this impacts on stem cell survival. The project is a collaboration between the University of Auckland, Victoria University Wellington and the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, Australia.