The Rationale for Macrophage Therapy and Its Preclinical Characteristics

Taken together, the results summarized above as w ell as additional studies, it is suggestive that timely local innate immune cells with alternative activity, reminiscence of dendritic-like, are required for CNS ability to cope with injurious conditions, and that they are needed at the sub-acute phase follovdng injuries. 

Initial experiments in animals with complete spinal cord transection demonstrated that local application of macrophages that have been co-incubated with sciatic nerve promoted motor recovery (Lazarov-Spiegleretal., 1996 Rapalino et al., 1998). Subsequently, the experiments were repeated in a model of severe spinal cord contusion. In those experiments blood-borne monocytes were activated by co-incubation with autogeneous skin (Bomstein et al., 2003). The results revealed that this was equally effective for recovery from spinal cord injury. In these and subsequent experiments, the macrophages were characterized phenotypically, and parameters such as site of injection, dosing and therapeutic window were studied. Those macrophages were found to have a dendritic-like phenotype (Bomstein et al., 2003) and expressed features that are reminiscent of alternative activation production 

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