Mesenchymal stem cells transplantation as a replacement stem cell for the treatment of neuropathic pain

Nerve injury can lead to sensory and motor dysfunction, and its accompanying neuropathic pain (NPP) causes greater psychosomatic injury to patients, which may lead to negative effects on the treatment of primary diseases and even treatment failure. Painkillers or other physiotherapy methods are used to treat pain clinically, but there are inherent defects, side effects and dependence of drug use. The important thing is that they cannot repair injured nerves and reconstruct nerve function. Therefore, it is particularly important to explore foreground treatment methods. More and more studies have shown that the transplantation of functional active cells has achieved exciting results as a therapeutic strategy for nerve repair and functional recovery. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have the characteristics of differentiation potential, self-renewal, and low immunogenicity and make them the most exploratory therapeutic cells for treating nerve injury and NPP. MSC transplantation may be used as a bioactive cell to exert the pharmacological properties of analgesia. The potential mechanisms of MSCs in relieving pain including neuroprotection, neuronutrition, immunoregulation, promoting axonal regeneration and remyelination, inhibiting glial cell activation and scar formation, and improving the inflammatory microenvironment of nerve injury. These functions eventually repair the injured nerve and relieve pain. In addition, MSCs can relieve NPP by down-regulating the expression of pain-related molecules (such as ion channels and receptors). Therefore, in this paper, we discussed the relationship between MSCs and nerve injury repair, the possible mechanism of MSCs and NPP and their potential therapeutic methods as NPP therapy, and prospected the problems existing and need to be solved in cell transplantation in NPP treatment at present.