Translating G-CSF as an Adjunct Therapy to Stem Cell Transplantation for Stroke

Among recently investigated stroke therapies, stem cell treatment holds great promise by virtue of their putative ability to replace lost cells, promote endogenous neurogenesis, and produce behavioral and functional improvement through their “bystander effects.” Translating stem cell in the clinic, however, presents a number of technical difficulties. A strategy suggested to enhance therapeutic utility of stem cells is combination therapy, i.e., co-transplantation of stem cells or adjunct treatment with pharmacological agents and substrates, which is assumed to produce more profound therapeutic benefits by circumventing limitations of individual treatments and facilitating complementary brain repair processes. We previously demonstrated enhanced functional effects of co-treatment with granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (G-CSF) and human umbilical cord blood cell (hUCB) transplantation in animal models of traumatic brain injury (TBI). Here, we suggest that the aforementioned combination therapy may also produce synergistic effects in stroke. Accordingly, G-CSF treatment may reduce expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines and enhance neurogenesis rendering a receptive microenvironment for hUCB engraftment. Adjunct treatment of G-CSF with hUCB may facilitate stemness maintenance and guide neural lineage commitment of hUCB cells. Moreover, regenerative mechanisms afforded by G-CSF-mobilized endogenous stem cells, secretion of growth factors by hUCB grafts and G-CSF-recruited endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs), as well as the potential graft–host integration that may promote synaptic circuitry re-establishment could altogether produce more pronounced functional improvement in stroked rats subjected to a combination G-CSF treatment and hUCB transplantation. Nevertheless, differences in pathology and repair processes underlying TBI and stroke deserve consideration when testing the effects of combinatorial G-CSF and hUCB cell transplantation for stroke treatment. Further studies are also required to determine the safety and efficacy of this intervention in both preclinical and clinical stroke studies.