APLICACIÓN CÉLULAS MADRE

A variety of growth factors, such as nerve growth factor (NGF), ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNF), IGF, and FGF, are secreted from nerve stumps following injury (Bixby et al., 1988; Longo et al., 1983). These growth factors stimulate axonal growth in close contact with Schwann cells, which are the primary support cells of the peripheral nervous system (Shimizu et al., 2007; Sofroniew et al., 2001). Since the above-mentioned regeneration sequence is known to fail in long nerve defects, cellular treatments, such as stem cell therapy, might be useful (Lundborg et al., 1982) as a means to introduce growth factors into the gap and thereby promote nerve regeneration. ASCs can secrete some nerve growth factors, including IGF and FGF (Rehman et al., 2004; Zavan et al., 2010), so these cells might have the capacity to promote nerve healing. In addition, a number of recent studies reported the successful differentiation of ASCs into neural lineage cells and Schwann cells in vitro (Safford et al., 2002; Fujimura et al., 2005; Xu et al., 2008; Kingham et al., 2007; Oh et al., 2010).