spinal cord injury (sci) is one of the devastating conditions leading to functional and neurological deficits following road traffic accidents. to date, there is no definite treatment for repairing damaged spinal cord tissue. in this regard, cell therapy opens a new window in front of scientists by using different cells such as mesenchymal stem cells, olfactory ensheathing cells, schwann cells,...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effects of olfactory ensheathing cell transplantation on functional recovery of rats with complete spinal cord transection. DATA SOURCES A computer-based online search of Medline (1989-2013), Embase (1989-2013), Cochrane library (1989-2013), Chinese Biomedical Literature Database (1989-2013), China National Knowledge Infrastructure (1989-2013), VIP (1989-2013), Wanfa...

Olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs) have become a popular candidate for the transplant-mediated repair of the damaged CNS. In this review a description is made of the origins of these cells and a historical development of their purification and maintenance in culture. In addition, we illustrate the cellular and molecular characteristics of OECs and emphasise that although they share many propert...

The formation of complex but highly organized neural circuits requires interactions between neurons and glia. During the assembly of the Drosophila olfactory circuit, 50 olfactory receptor neuron (ORN) classes and 50 projection neuron (PN) classes form synaptic connections in 50 glomerular compartments in the antennal lobe, each of which represents a discrete olfactory information-processing ch...

The incurability of spinal cord injury and subcortical strokes is due to the inability of nerve fibres to regenerate. One of the clearest clinical situations where failure of regeneration leads to a permanent functional deficit is avulsion of the brachial plexus. In current practice, surgical re-implantation of avulsed spinal roots provides a degree of motor recovery, but the patients neither r...

background: the failure of regeneration after spinal cord injury (sci) has been attributed to axonal demyelination and neuronal death. cellular replacement and white matter regeneration are both necessary for sci repair. in this study, we evaluated the co-transplantation of olfactory ensheathing cells (oec) and embryonic stem (es) cell-derived motor neurons (esmn) on contused sci. methods: oec ...

Astrocyte-like glial cells are abundant in the central nervous system of adult Drosophila and exhibit morphology similar to astrocytes of mammals. Previous evidence has shown that astrocyte-like glial cells are strongly associated with synapses in the antennal lobe (AL), the first relay of the olfactory system, where olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) transmit information into projection neurons...