BackgroundNowadays, stroke leads to a significant part of the adult mortality and morbidity and also it could result in some neurological deficits in the patients’ lives. Cell therapy has opened a new approach to treat the brain ischemia and reduce its terrible effects on the patients’ lives. There are several articles which show that the cell therapy could be beneficial for treating brain stroke. In this study, we have planned to present a new cell therapy method for stroke by administration of Mesenchymal stem cells and differentiated neural stem cells without astrocytes.Method and MaterialsThe Mesenchymal stem cells were isolated from tibia and femur of a 250~300 g rat and they were cultured in DMEM/F12, 10% fetal bovine serum, 1% Pen/Strep. Neural stem cells were isolated from 14 days rat embryo ganglion eminence and were cultured in NSA media containing Neurobasal, 2% B27, bFGF 10 ng/ml and EGF 20 ng/ml after 5 days they formed some neurospheres. The isolated neural stem cells were differentiated to neural lineages by adding 5% fetal bovine serum to their culture media. After 48 hours the astrocytes were depleted by using MACS kit.ResultsThe group that received Mesenchymal stem cells systemically and differentiated neural stem cells without astrocytes had the best neurological outcomes and the least infarct volume and apoptosis. It could be understood that this cell therapy method might cause almost full recovery after brain stoke.ConclusionUsing combination cell therapy with Mesenchymal stem cells and differentiated neural stem cells with removed astrocyte could provide a novel method for curing brain stroke.

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Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) is still a devastating clinical problem with irreversible consequences leading to permanent functional loss and life time disability. This study was conducted to assess the healing effect of bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells on locomotor function and changes of Tumor Necrosis Factor alpha (TNF-α) after SCI in mice. Forty two BALB/C mice were divided into 3 equal groups of control, SCI and treatment [transplantation of 5×10 4 Bone Marrow Stem Cells (BMSCs)]. The SCI was induced by compression for 2 min at T10 and injury bilaterally. The femoral and tibial bones were used for bone marrow isolation and culture was made using Dulbecco's Modified Eagle's Medium supplemented with fetal bovine serum, L-glutamine and penicillin/streptomycin. Cell morphology was evaluated in all passages. Characterization of BMSCs was conducted by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction and by osteogenic differentiation of BMSCs. The ELISA was undertaken for TNF-α. Open field locomotion was evaluated by Toyama mouse score. The BMSCs were plastic adherent and fibroblastic spindle-shape. MSCs were positive for CD90 and negative for CD34 and CD45. Osteogenic differentiation was noticed when stained with alizarin red. The serum TNF-α level increased after 24 h, 3 and 5 weeks post-SCI and was time dependent. The neurological score significantly improved after 8 weeks after BMSC transplantation. Transplantation of BMSCs was shown to decrease the TNF-α level and inflammation in injured spinal cord and improve the neurological outcome. These findings can be added to the literature for reduction of inflammation in SCI and improvement of neurological outcome after transplantation of BMSCs.