Neural stem cells

A neural stem cell is a cell that can both copy itself and mature into the specialised cells of the nervous system. In a developing embryo they are what the brain and spinal cord are assembled from.

They persist into adult life, though in far smaller numbers and in only a couple of places — most famously a region of the hippocampus, the part of the brain involved in forming memories.

A neural stem cell has two possible futures, and it chooses between them. It can divide to make another stem cell, keeping the pool stocked, or it can commit and mature into one of three finished cell types.

Those three are neurons, the cells that carry electrical signals; astrocytes, the star-shaped support cells that regulate the chemical environment around neurons and help form the blood–brain barrier; and oligodendrocytes, which wrap nerve fibres in myelin — the fatty insulation that lets a signal travel quickly.

Which of the three a given cell becomes is decided by the chemical signals reaching it from the tissue around it.

RediCell’s neural lines are differentiated from the same umbilical cord tissue source as the mesenchymal lines, and are expanded no further than the second passage.