William Woods
School of Medicine
Developing neural transplant cell sprays for traumatic neurological injuries
Traumatic neurological injuries to the brain and spinal cord have devastating clinical consequences with high costs for healthcare systems . Enhancing regeneration following neurological injury represents a major clinical challenge . Neural cell transplantation therapies have been shown to have significant translational potential to promote regeneration following such injuries . However , current cell delivery methods for neural cell transplantation have major drawbacks , including clinical risks associated with surgical microinjection into neural tissue ( e . g . haemorrhage ), and high cell loss on microinjection through fine gauge needles into densely packed neural tissue . Spray delivery can offer significant translational benefits in this regard as well as rapid and homogenous delivery however has never been attempted using neural cells . This study aims to investigate whether spray delivery of neural transplant cells is safe . Oligodendrocyte precursor cells , a neural cell type , were spray delivered via a commercial spray bottle and assessed for survival , proliferative and differentiational capabilities . Controls were standard delivery by pipetting . Post spraying , neural cells could survive and showed evidence of normal proliferation and differentiation into mature oligodendrocytes . These findings show that spray delivery technology could offer a novel clinical solution for cell delivery in transplantation therapies for traumatic neurological injuries .
Postgraduate Conference 2020 Page 47