Secrets of stem cells
Substances produced by stem cells helped cure brain hemorrhage
Press Service of the Russian Science Foundation
Russian scientists have come up with how to deal with hemorrhagic stroke — a life-threatening hemorrhage in the brain. They suggested injecting into the affected tissues substances secreted by mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), which play a crucial role in the restoration of most body tissues. Although in this paper the authors have studied the effectiveness of the approach when using it immediately after injury, there is reason to believe that this concept can form the basis of the latest effective methods of stroke therapy.
Research supported by a grant Russian Science Foundation (RNF), published in the journal Pharmaceuticals (Karagyaur et al., MSC Secretome as a Promising Tool for Neuroprotection and Neuroregeneration in a Model of Intracerebral Hemorrhage – VM).
Stroke affects about 450 thousand Russians annually. The most dangerous form of this disease, hemorrhagic stroke or cerebral hemorrhage, causes the death of the patient in 60% of cases, and most survivors do not return to normal life. The causes of its occurrence are different — these are diseases of the cardiovascular system, and injuries - but without timely professional help, the prognosis is disappointing. Therapy in the case of hemorrhagic stroke boils down to removing blood from the skull, which can compress brain tissue and cause them to die off. This method is not very effective and its application is not always technically possible, and therefore it is necessary to look for alternative approaches.
"Mesenchymal stem cells give rise to a variety of tissues: bones, cartilage, fat and other types of connective tissue. They also play an important role in the processes of tissue regeneration and renewal — largely due to the release of biologically active compounds. We decided to check how effective their secret will be in the treatment of hemorrhagic stroke," said Maxim Karagyaur, associate professor of the Faculty of Fundamental Medicine of Lomonosov Moscow State University, senior researcher at the Institute of Regenerative Medicine of the Moscow State University.
Employees of Lomonosov Moscow State University (Moscow) caused a hemorrhagic stroke in 98 rats, and then tried to resuscitate the animals. To do this, they injected a nutrient medium into the damaged area, in which rat or human mesenchymal stem cells had been grown before. The latter were needed in order to assess the specificity of the action of the secret between different organisms. For two weeks, the researchers observed the animals: the area of the brain where the stroke was caused contains a large number of nerve pathways, and therefore the degree of brain damage correlates with the general condition and behavior of rats.
The results of the experiment showed that the best effect was provided by the introduction of brain neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in combination with a tenfold concentrated medium from the culture of MSCs of rodents, and not humans, which scientists explain by the species specificity of the active substances. All treated animals survived and after three days only a third had mild symptoms of the disease, after a week everyone looked healthy. Their brain damage area decreased, and they also coped well with tests for long-term memory, during which they were taught to avoid uncomfortable conditions. Without therapy, by the end of the experiment, 30% had died and 20% were in serious condition.
"Strictly speaking, the approach we propose is hardly feasible in practice: we injected the secret of stem cells in the first minutes of stroke development, but in life it is almost impossible. In the future, we plan to check whether the proposed approach is effective in a real time frame. We very much hope that the results obtained will be an impetus to the development of new methods of treatment of diseases associated with damage to nervous tissue," Maxim Karagyaur sums up.
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