RISEUP Project: An Innovative Application of Microsecond Electric Pulses for Spinal Cord Injury Regeneration

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a disabling, devasting and irreversible condition that strongly impacts on patients' life and their families. Every year among 250.000 and 500.000 new SCI cases are diagnosed. Most of them are traumatic and the average of age at diagnosis is 20–29 years for males, while females are most at risk in adolescence (15–19), which means a tremendous socioeconomic impact on affected individuals and the health care system. Recent advances in medical management of SCI have significantly improved diagnosis, stabilization, survival rate and well-being of SCI patients. However, there has been small progress on treatment options for improving the neurological outcomes of SCI patients. This is principally due to the high complexity of spinal cord tissue and to all events that occur after its lesion. RISEUP is a H2020 FET-Open project (nr. 964562) aimed at introducing stem cells microsecond (µs) electric pulses stimulation as a strategy for guiding their differentiation towards a neuronal phenotype for SCI regeneration. Here the Authors report the first results on molecular response induced by µs pulses on mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and induced neuronal stem cells (iNSCs).