RESEARCH Open Access Post-CNS-inflammation expression of

CXCL12 promotes the endogenous myelin/ neuronal repair capacity following spontaneous recovery from multiple sclerosis-like disease Rina Zilkha-Falb3, Nathali Kaushansky1, Naoto Kawakami2 and Avraham Ben-Nun1* Background: Demyelination and axonal degeneration, hallmarks of multiple sclerosis (MS), are associated with the central nervous system (CNS) inflammation facilitated by C-X-C motif chemokine 12 (CXCL12) chemokine. Both in MS and in experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), the deleterious CNS inflammation has been associated with upregulation of CXCL12 expression in the CNS. We investigated the expression dynamics of CXCL12 in the CNS with progression of clinical EAE and following spontaneous recovery, with a focus on CXCL12 expression in the hippocampal neurogenic dentate gyrus (DG) and in the corpus callosum (CC) of spontaneously recovered mice, and its potential role in promoting the endogenous myelin/neuronal repair capacity. Methods: CNS tissue sections from mice with different clinical EAE phases or following spontaneous recovery and in vitro differentiated adult neural stem cell cultures were analyzed by immunofluorescent staining an