Canine Epidermal Neural Crest Stem Cells: Characterization and Potential as Therapy Candidate for a Large Animal Model of Spinal Cord Injury

January 2014 in “ Stem Cells Translational Medicine ”

Barbara Gericota, Joseph S. Anderson, Gaela Mitchell, Dori L. Borjesson, Beverly K. Sturges, Jan A. Nolta, Maya Sieber‐Blum

canine epidermal neural crest stem cells cEPI-NCSC hair follicle bulge neural crest genes pluripotency genes neural crest derivatives spinal cord stem cells stem cells hair follicle

Studysummary This study reports that epidermal neural crest stem cells from dogs (cEPI-NCSC) can generate neural crest derivatives and may offer a new cell-based therapy for canine spinal cord injury, with potential as a model for human treatments. Our plain-language summary of this paper — not a Tressless recommendation.

The study characterized canine epidermal neural crest stem cells (cEPI-NCSC) from various dog breeds, demonstrating their multipotency and self-renewal abilities. These cells, derived from the hair follicle bulge, expressed neural crest and pluripotency genes and could generate all major neural crest derivatives. The research highlighted the potential of cEPI-NCSC as candidates for cell-based therapies in canine spinal cord injury (SCI), especially in chondrodystrophic dogs, due to their close relationship with spinal cord stem cells. This work laid the foundation for developing new treatments for SCI in dogs and provided a promising large animal model for human SCI research.

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