Neural stem cell delivery via porous collagen scaffolds promotes neuronal differentiation and locomotion recovery in spinal cord injury.

Neural stem cell (NSC) grafts have demonstrated significant effects in animal models of spinal cord injury (SCI), yet their clinical translation remains challenging. Significant evidence suggests that the supporting matrix of NSC grafts has a crucial role in regulating NSC effects. Here we demonstrate that grafts based on porous collagen-based scaffolds (PCSs), similar to biomaterials utilized clinically in induced regeneration, can deliver and protect embryonic NSCs at SCI sites, leading to significant improvement in locomotion recovery in an experimental mouse SCI model, so that 12 weeks post-injury locomotion performance of implanted animals does not statistically differ from that of uninjured control animals.