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This Stem Cell Discovery May Help Fix Brain and Spine Damage

And it was discovered completely by accident.

Stem cells are pretty amazing. They can grow into and repair organs. They can turn into multiple different types of cells. They’re also very useful to create new blood cells for patients going through chemotherapy. While there’s still a lot we don’t know about them, scientists hope they can be used for some potentially groundbreaking treatments in the future—and maybe even cure brain injuries.

A team of researchers discovered stem cells in the bodies of mice that helped repair injured spinal cords. In a new paper published on Monday in the journal Developmental Cell, the authors said that the cells responded to injuries in the mice’s central nervous system. They believe that the findings could potentially lead to a treatment for humans as well.

“We hope that studying these cells will help build a more complete picture of the role different types of stem cells play in repairing damage, which could have important implications for regenerative medicine,” Caetano Reis e Sousa, an immunology researcher at the Francis Crick Institute and co-author of the paper, said in a press release.

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Like penicillin and Viagra before it, the cells—known as ependymal cells—were discovered by accident. The researchers were originally searching for immune cells in the brains of the mice with injured spinal cords. However, they ended up stumbling on the stem cells, and found that they would automatically move towards any damage to the spine. The team also found that the cells would divide into three main types of cells found in the central nervous system: neurons, astrocytes, and oligodendrocytes.

The authors said that while they don’t know for certain if human bodies carry the cell, the ependymal cells could help the body produce more neurons after an injury to the brain or spine. “If we could find a way to overcome the barriers that are stopping the differentiation into neurons and oligodendrocytes after spinal cord injury, it could present a new avenue of therapies to treat spinal cord injuries,” Bruce Frederico, an immunobiology researcher at the Francis Crick Institute and co-author of the paper, said in the release.

It’s awesome to think that we could ever reach a future where long term trauma due to spine and brain injuries in humans become a thing of the past. It could represent a lot of hope for the nearly 18,000 Americans who sustain spinal injuries each year—and all because of a complete unintentional discovery to boot.

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