Clinical Achievements, Obstacles, Falsehoods, and Future Directions of Cell-Based Neurorestoratology

Abstract

Neurorestoratology is a newborn and emerging distinct discipline in the neuroscience family. Its establishment will definitely speed up the advance of this promising frontier realm. A worldwide association for Neurorestoratology and several official journals covering this discipline have recently been set up. Clinical practice has demonstrated that the sequelae of damages and diseases of the CNS can be functionally restored to some degree. Obstacles that hinder the promising methods of Neurorestoratology to be translated from the bench to the bedside include political, governmental, religious, ethical, economic, and scientific factors or in most instances they work in combination. Falsehoods against the recognition of neurorestoratology include: 1) no therapeutic method is currently available that suggests that it is possible to repair, even partially, neurological functions; 2) according to the media, a cure will be very soon found for patients with severe spinal cord injury, brain trauma, and progressively deteriorated CNS degenerative diseases; 3) randomizing double blind control designed studies are the only gold standard for clinical study; self-comparison designed studies should be ignored and neglected. Future directions for neurorestoratology include the comparison and integration of current and upcoming available neurorestoration methods to look for the optimization regimes, and edit and publish clinical neurorestoratology treatment guidelines.