The Development of Stem Cell-Based Treatment for Acute Ischemic Cerebral Injury.

Acute ischemic brain injury is a serious disease that severely endangers the life safety of patients. Such disease is hard to predict and highly lethal with very limited effective treatments currently. Although currently,there are drug therapy, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, rehabilitation therapy and other treatments in clinical practice, it is not significantly effective for patients when situation is severe. Thus scientists must explore more effective treatments. Stem cells are undifferentiated cells with a strong potential of self-renewal and differentiate into various types of tissues and organs. The emergence of them has bring new hopes for overcoming difficult diseases, further improving medical technology and promoting the development of modern medicine. Some combining therapies and genetically modified stem cell therapy have also been proved to produce obvious neuroprotective function for acute ischemic brain injury. This review is an introduction to the current research findings and discusses of the definition, origin and classification on stem cells, as well as the future prospects of the stem cell-based treatment for acute ischemic cerebral injury.