Macrophage Therapy Developed for Complete SCI may also be of benefit for Incomplete SCI

Yonit Bomstein, Karen Vitner, Keren Bressler, Barak Yahalom, Igor Smirnov, Jonathan B. Marder and Eti Yoles

A therapy for complete spinal cord injury (SCI) is being developed, consisting  of autologous grafts of macrophages that have been educated to a wound-healing phenotype by co-incubation with skin tissue. Following successful Phase I clinical trials that indicated a favorable safety profile, the therapy is now being tested in Phase II clinical trials. We now show that this cell therapy offers measurable benefit in animals subjected to less severe SCI. Skin-activated macrophages were implanted to the moderately contused spinal cord of adult rats days 8-9 post injury. Retrograde tracing experiments with Fluorogold revealed no adverse effect of the macrophage treatment on surviving neurons, and in fact led to higher numbers of labeled neurons in red nuclei. Behavioral assessment revealed significantly better recovery in the rats implanted with macrophages as compared to control rats.

These results suggest that the macrophage cell therapy now being tested on patients with complete SCI may also be beneficial in cases of incomplete SCI, which account for slightly over 50% of all SCI cases.