Neural cell cultures to study spinal cord injury

There are great challenges involved in identifying potential therapies for the repair of spinal cord injury (SCI). It is well accepted that not one, but a combination of therapeutic strategies will be required to effectively repair the damage. However, identifying novel therapeutics is hindered by the lack of reliable methods available that facilitate high throughput screening of numerous compounds. While the use of animals provides an important means for testing new therapies, in vivo models of SCI can be time consuming and require the use of large cohorts of animals. In this review, we have focused on three aspects of repair following SCI (1) neurite outgrowth, (2) glial scar and (3) remyelination. No in vitro model encapsulates all the features of SCI and we discuss the limitations and virtues of the various cultures, which range from individual cell-types through to complex co-cultures. We discuss how these cultures can be used as a moderate throughput screen to identify novel therapeutics for CNS repair before being verified in animal models.