—Despite the vast improvements of cell therapy in
spinal cord injury treatment, no optimum protocol has been
developed for application of neural stem/progenitor cells. In
this regard, the present meta-analysis showed that the effi-
cacy of the neural stem/progenitor cell (NSPC) transplantation
depends mainly on injury model, intervention phase,
transplanted cell count, immunosuppressive use, and probably
stem cell source. Improved functional recovery post
NSPC transplantation was found to be higher in transection
and contusion models. Moreover, NSPC transplantation in
acute phase of spinal injury was found to have better functional
recovery. Higher doses (>3 � 106 cell/kg) were also
shown to be optimum for transplantation, but immunosuppressive
agent administration negatively affected the motor
function recovery. Scaffold use in NSPC transplantation
could also effectively raise functional recovery. � 2016 Published
by Elsevier Ltd. on behalf of IBR
