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Abstract

Multiple Sclerosis is an autoimmune and neurodegenerative disease of the central nervous system. There are currently 2.8 million people living with Multiple Sclerosis worldwide, including 9000 people in Ireland, with a prevalence of 193 per 100,000 people. Symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis include sensory loss, fatigue, cognitive dysfunction, spasticity, depression, optic neuritis, gait ataxia, diplopia, and loss of bladder control. Currently, there is no standardised treatment or cure for Multiple Sclerosis with many strategies focusing on symptoms. Stem cells have emerged as promising approaches for Multiple Sclerosis therapeutics. Clinical trials primarily focus on mesenchymal stem cell-based therapies for Multiple Sclerosis. Furthermore, due to their immunomodulatory and anti-inflammatory characteristics, adipose derived stem cells have recently surfaced as novel therapies for diseases, such as Multiple Sclerosis. Current knowledge shows that there is potential for adipose derived stem cells to replace other adult stem cell-based therapies, as they are much more readily available and involve less invasive isolation procedures. There are currently 371 clinical trials involving mesenchymal stem cells and 462 clinical trials involving adipose derived stem cells, with research focused on skeletal applications, wound healing, and to a lesser degree, haematological and neurological disorders. Although adipose derived stem cells could represent a valuable treatment option for many diseases, several drawbacks to their advancement remain, such as their pro-tumorigenic properties, possible negative alteration of the immune system, and the difficulty in assessing their migration patterns once administered in vivo. Adipose derived stem cell-based therapies have been described as a double-edged sword, with both beneficiary and unfavourable effects observed. Most current clinical trials continue to focus on establishing the safety and efficacy of adipose derived stem cell-based therapeutics, with promising results becoming progressively evident. This review reports stem cell-based therapies as potential therapeutic approaches in the treatment and management of Multiple Sclerosis. This paper explores the characterisation and aetiology of the disease, current treatments for Multiple Sclerosis, and clinical trial data that investigated the therapeutic safety and efficacy of proposed stem cell-derived Multiple Sclerosis treatments.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21427/370d-ms60

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

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