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Human spinal interneurons repair the injured spinal cord through synaptic integration [scRNA-seq]

ABSTRACT: Spinal cord injury (SCI) results in irreversible disruption of motor, sensory and autonomic circuits with no approved reparative treatment to restore lost function. Endogenous V2a spinal interneurons (SpINs) have been implicated as a key component in recovery post-SCI, but the integration of these cells with injured host networks after transplantation has been unexplored. We show that transplanted human stem cell-derived V2a-enriched SpINs functionally integrate with the host rat injured spinal cord after cervical SCI. Neural tracing and optogenetic stimulation of transplanted cells and host supraspinal pathways reveal functional host-transplant-host connectivity, reflecting a functional neuronal relay. Single-cell transcriptomic analyses pre- and post-transplantation confirmed maturation of transplanted SpINs and glial progenitors involved in spinal cord repair, and revealed genes that were specific to V2a SpINs synapsing with the host phrenic motor network. This study demonstrates the feasibility of generating human cervical V2a-enriched SpINs that establish functional host-transplant connectivity and improve motor recovery post-SCI.

ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens

PROVIDER: GSE316101 | GEO | 2026/09/15

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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Project description:The inflammatory response after spinal cord injury (SCI) is an important contributor to secondary damage. Infiltrating macrophages can acquire a spectrum of activation states, however, the microenvironment at the SCI site favors macrophage polarization into a pro-inflammatory phenotype, which is one of the reasons why macrophage transplantation has failed. In this study, we investigated the therapeutic potential of the macrophage secretome for SCI recovery. We investigated the effect of the secretome in vitro using peripheral and CNS-derived neurons and human neural stem cells. Moreover, we perform a pre-clinical trial using a SCI compression mice model and analyzed the recovery of motor, sensory and autonomic functions. Instead of transplanting the cells, we injected the paracrine factors and extracellular vesicles that they secrete, avoiding the loss of the phenotype of the transplanted cells due to local environmental cues. We demonstrated that different macrophage phenotypes have a distinct effect on neuronal growth and survival, namely, the alternative activation with IL-10 and TGF-β1 (M(IL-10+TGF-β1)) promotes significant axonal regeneration. We also observed that systemic injection of soluble factors and extracellular vesicles derived from M(IL-10+TGF-β1) macrophages promotes significant functional recovery after compressive SCI and leads to higher survival of spinal cord neurons. Additionally, the M(IL-10+TGF-β1) secretome supported the recovery of bladder function and decreased microglial activation, astrogliosis and fibrotic scar in the spinal cord. Proteomic analysis of the M(IL-10+TGF-β1)-derived secretome identified clusters of proteins involved in axon extension, dendritic spine maintenance, cell polarity establishment, and regulation of astrocytic activation. Overall, our results demonstrated that macrophages-derived soluble factors and extracellular vesicles might be a promising therapy for SCI with possible clinical applications.

Project description:Depending on the severity of a CNS injury, in humans as well as in experimental animal models certain degrees of functional recovery are observed. Rodent studies have provided much evidence for underlying anatomical changes involving neurite outgrowth of both spared and axotomized fiber tracts, also referred to as sprouting. Following a thoracic spinal cord injury (SCI) in adult rats, axotomized fibers of the hindlimb corticospinal tract (CST) were found to sprout into the cervical spinal cord at different rostrocaudal levels. Anterograde tracings showed that these new collaterals of motor cortical hindlimb fibers project into the intermediate laminae of the cervical grey matter, particularly pronounced at the level of cervical segment three (C3). The molecular cues which induce the growth and guide these sprouts of hindlimb CST fibers are unknown. We hypothesize that sectreted factors and guidance and adhesion molecules are specifically expressed in the intermediate laminae of the cervical spinal cord to direct and target the ingrowth of the sprouting hindlimb CST fibers. To test our hypothesis the transcription profile of the target region of sprouts was investigated with RNA sequencing of total RNA extracted from the intermediate laminae (IV-VII) of the spinal gray matter at cervical level C3. Four major comparisons were performed, which were then again compared to each other. The first comparison was between samples of animals with an SCI sacrificed at four different time points after injury (1, 3, 6, 12 weeks after injury). The second and third comparison was between samples of rats with a SCI compared to their sham controls sacrificed at the same time point after surgery (1 week or 12 weeks respectively). The fourth comparison was between samples from animals of the two control groups, rats with a sham surgery which were either sacrificed at one or at twelve weeks after injury. We found that most changes in gene expression ocurred at one week after SCI and least changes occured at twelve weeks after SCI, suggesting that the largest effects on a global level of gene expression occur during early time points after injury. Interestingly, also we also found changes in gene expression when comparing the samples from the two control groups, which suggests that sham surgery consisting of a laminectomy is sufficient to induce transcriptional changes in the spinal cord. This is the first study to provide insight into transcriptional changes in the target region of sprouts investigating the role of the cervical spinal cord (target region) for sprouting of hindlimb CST fibers.

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Human spinal interneurons repair the injured spinal cord through synaptic integration [scRNA-seq]

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