Development of regenerative medicine for spinal cord injury in HTLV-1 associated myelopathy

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We studied somatic stem cells in order to forward the development of regenerative medicine for spinal cord injury in Human T-Lymphotropic Virus Type 1 (HTLV-1) associated myelopathy (HAM). We investigated the infectiousness of HTLV-1 to somatic stem cells and used an animal model for HAM to analyze the regenerative capacity of somatic stem cells as a treatment option. We transplanted adipose derived somatic stem cells (ASCs) from HTLV-1 infected GFP rats into GFP-negative non-infected rats, and no infection was observed. However, when we analyzed the infectiousness to human-derived ASCs in vitro, we clearly observed infection, indicating that there is a risk that ASCs could become infected with HTLV-1. We also attempted to create an animal model of early-onset HAM using HTLV-1 infected rats by challenging the infection every 2 weeks; however, no acceleratory effect was observed. Finally, we analyzed the major pathogenic processes leading to spinal cord lesions in HAM, and we demonstrated that overproduction of CXCL10 from astrocytes plays a major role in HAM pathogenesis.