Acute intralesional injection of extracellular vesicles secreted by human umbilical cord mesenchymal stromal cells improves BBB score following thoracic contusion in female Fischer rats

STUDY PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to compare the long-term functional outcomes obtained following acute intralesional or intravenous application of EVs secreted by hUC-MSCs in a rat spinal cord contusion model. DATA COLLECTED: Adult female Fischer-344 rats (n = 40) at 12 weeks of age were used in this project. Thirty rats were subjected to a 200 kdyn contusion at thoracic level 8 followed by acute treatment with extracellular vesicles derived from human umbilical cord mesenchymal stromal cells (huUC-MSCs). In addition, 10 rats only underwent a laminectomy at thoracic level 8 and served as sham controls. Prior to surgery, rats undergoing contusion were randomly divided into three treatment groups, each comprising 10 rats that received the following treatments acutely after contusion: (a) 2 µL of Ringer's-lactate solution (i.pa. vehicle) or (b) 2 µL of Ringer's-lactate solution containing 1.5 × 10^9 extracellular vesicles injected into the parenchyma at the SCI lesion site (i.pa. EVs), or (c) 100 µL of Ringer's-lactate solution containing 1.5 × 10^9 EVs injected intravenously (i.v. EVs) via the tail vein. The number of injected vesicles corresponds to the approximated amount of vesicles secreted by 1 Mio. huUC-MSCs in 24 hours. Four rats were excluded from further analyses due to inadequate contusion, death during surgery or due to post-surgery complications requiring euthanasia (i.pa. vehicle: n = 2; i.pa. EVs: n = 1; i.v. EVs: n = 1). In this dataset, BBB scores and subcores were collected starting from 1 day post-injury until 56 days post-injury. DATA USAGE NOTES: