Will Stem Cell Open up the New Realms of Neurointervention?

I heard on the news about the world's first stem cell medication. The news said that a cardiac stem cell therapy was expected to be approved for use at hospitals. The approval will be the first of its kind in the world to allow the use of this form of treatment. The nation's drug safety agency said that a stem cell medication for treating heart attack victims, passed all the required safety and quality tests. The vendor said that the cardiac stem cell therapy could improve ventricular contraction in patients with refractory post-infarct heart failure. They also said that the phase Ⅲ study is underway on the stem cell therapy for recovery of brain [1]. Before Dr. Woo-Suk Hwang made ethical problems in his research, the stem cell therapy had had a high public attention 5 years ago. The hard controversy about ethical problems about embryonic stem cell and the intangible achievement led to draw public attention away from stem cell therapy. However, many efforts have been made to use the stem cells driven from umbilical cord blood or bone marrow instead of embryonic stem cell. Somatic cells, such as fibroblasts extracted from the patient's own body, can be reprogrammed to pluripotent stem cells by the introduction of transcription factors. These induced pluripotent stem cells are then differentiated to specific neuron types for transplantation with this technology. Patient-specific cells can be produced without the need for immunosuppressive treatment after transplantation. Then, the ethical issue with the use of human embryonic stem cells can be avoided [2]. Results of many basic researches bring us much closer to the day when clinical grade stem cells might be available. Stem cell therapy offers a remarkable potential for the recovery of brain function after stroke, and treatment of stroke using stem cell is a challenge that is worthy of high expectations. Nowadays, we can easily find out a lot of researches about stem cell for stroke recovery from Google or Pubmed search engine. The delivery of stem cell to targeting an area is the cause that neurointerventionists should be concerned about the stem cell therapy in stroke. There are multimodal delivery methods from stereotactic injection to intra-arterial routes. In view of the results so far achieved, intra-arterial delivery of stem cells is performed via the catheter that is traced though the feeding artery to the target area. This method will have a chance to …