Abstract
Background: Spinal cord injury (SCI) is relatively common in dogs and is a devastating condition such as loss of sensory neuron and motor neuron. However the main clinical protocol for the management of SCI is surgery to decompress and stabilize the vertebra. Especially, effective treatment for chronic spinal cord injury (CSPI) is not reported in any animals. Whereas, cell transplantation therapy is very desirable strategy for the treatment of CSPI, though much preclinical and clinical research work remains.

Aim: The aim of this study was to confirm an effect of the bone marrow derived mononuclear cell (BM-MNC) transplantation for CSPI of the dog.

Methods: We test that treatment efficiency with CSPI of 12 dogs by bone marrow derived mononuclear cell (BM-MNC) transplantation. Neurological evaluation is using by Texas Spinal Cord Injury Scale (TSCIS). Concurrently, we performed the characterization of the transplanted cells were evaluated by quantitative real-time PCR, flow cytometry and ELISA.

Result: All dogs had pre-transplantation TSCIS score of 0. Two animals did not show any improvement in the final TSCIS score. The remaining 10 dogs (83.4%) achieved improvement in the final TSCIS score. Five of them (41.7%) regained ambulatory function with a SCIS score greater than 10.
We revealed hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) expression mRNA from BM-MNC characterized by cell surface markers and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from cell transplanted dog.

Conclusions: BM-MNC transplantation may be effective for at least some case of CSPI.

Key words: spinal cord injury, bone marrow derived mononuclear cell, cell therapy