Thors read and approved the final manuscript for publication. Acknowle…

Thors read and approved the final manuscript for publication. Acknowledgements This study was supported by the grants GA CR P304/12/1370 GA CR 1300939S, P304/12/G069, LH12024, and Institutional grant 00023001IKEM (MZ CR). We thank James Dutt for critical reading of the manuscript. Author details 1 Institute of Experimental Medicine, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague, Czech Republic. 2Department of Neuroscience, Second Faculty of Medicine, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic. 3MR-Unit, Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, Staurosporine Institute for Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Prague, Czech Republic. 4Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, London, UK. Received: 13 December 2012 Revised: 24 April 2013 Accepted: 4 June 2013 Published: 7 June 2013 References 1. Donnelly EM, Lamanna J, Boulis NM: Stem cell therapy for the spinal cord. Stem Cell Res Ther 2012, 3:24. 2. Willerth SM: Neural tissue engineering using embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells. Stem Cell Res Ther 2011, 2:17. 3. Lindvall O, Kokaia Z: Stem cells in human neurodegenerative disorders: time for clinical translation? J Clin Invest 2010, 120:29?0. 4. Ronaghi M, Erceg S, Moreno-Manzano V, Stojkovic M: Challenges of stem cell therapy for spinal cord injury: human embryonic stem cells, endogenous neural stem cells, or induced pluripotent stem cells? Stem Cells 2010, 28:93?9. 5. Thomas KE, Moon LD: Will stem cell therapies be safe and effective for treating spinal cord injuries? Br Med Bull 2011, 98:127?42. 6. Einstein O, Ben-Hur T: The changing face of neural stem cell therapy in neurologic diseases. Arch Neurol 2008, 65:452?56. 7. Einstein O, Fainstein N, Vaknin I, Mizrachi-Kol R, Reihartz E, Grigoriadis N, Lavon I, Baniyash M, Lassmann H, Ben-Hur T: Neural precursors attenuate autoimmune encephalomyelitis by peripheral immunosuppression. Ann Neurol 2007, 61:209?18. 8. Rossi SL, Keirstead HS: Stem cells and spinal cord regeneration. Curr Opin Biotechnol 2009, 20:552?62. 9. Arboleda D, Forostyak S, Jendelova P, Marekova D, Amemori T, Pivonkova H, Masinova K, Sykova E: Transplantation of predifferentiated adiposederived stromal cells for the treatment of spinal cord injury. Cell Mol Neurobiol 2011, 31:1113?122.Conclusions The SPC-01 cell line can be expanded in large quantities and, when implanted into an animal model of SCI, the cells robustly survive in the lesion, express neurotrophins, stimulate the expression of host neurotrophic genes, and facilitate the sprouting of endogenous GAP43-positive axons. All of these actions lead to improvements in locomotor and sensory functions PubMed ID:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16989806 and to the sparing of the white matter in the short term. In the long term, about 25 of transplanted SPC-01 cells can slowly mature into motor neurons and participate to some extent in tissue reconstruction. SPC-01 cells were derived by using the same protocol as the CTX0E03 immortalized cell line derived from human cortical neuroepithelium [18]. These cells are currently undergoing testing in a human clinical trial for stroke patients. Similarly, our results represent a proof-of-concept that conditionally immortalized neural stem cell lines from human spinal cord could be used in the future for cell therapy in SCI patients. Additional filesAdditional file 1: Table S1. The numbers of animals used in all parts of the study. Additional file 2: Description of the methods for the determination of cell viability, labeling efficiency, and fluorescence-activa.