---

Introduction: Spinal cord injury (SCI) causes constant irreversible functional deficits. Poor prognosis of such a disease prompts scientists to work on an effective way of treatment. Stem cell transplantation provides a promising strategy for such researchers. Using olfactory ensheathed cells (OECs) has, so far, indicated very good results. Hensce, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of transplanted OECs on functional recovery of delayed phase of SCI in rats.
 
Materials & Methods: In this survey, eighteen adult male wistar rats were divided into sham, control, vehicle, and treatment groups. Sham group received only laminectomy in the T9 segment of spinal cord, while in other groups, contusion model was induced following laminectomy.7 days  after  injury, DMEM medium alone or with OECs was injected to the vehicle and treatment groups, respectively. For cell culture, the olfactory mucosa of 7-day-old male wistar rats was used. Locomotor behavior of animals in all the groups was evaluated by BBB, (Basso, Bresnahan and Beattie) test.
 
Findings: Comparison of the results by the second week to the end of the study illustrated significant changing differences between the OECs receivers and the control group, (p< 0.05).
 
Discussion & Conclusion: Our investigation demonstrated a positive impact of the OECs on functional recovery in the delayed phase of SCI.

---

Introduction: Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a serious clinical disorder, which involves the patient’s family as well as the community. After sever SCI, astrocytes of the central nervous system become reactive astrocytes, and produce glial scar which is a major obstacle to axons regeneration in the spinal cord. However, some studies have confirmed a spontaneous partial locomotor recovery in injured animals in the course of time and without any therapeutic interventions. Thus, in this study, locomotor function of animals with SCI was assessed to determine the exact scope of such a recovery through BBB (Basso, Bresnahan and Beattie) locomotor test during 20 weeks.
 
Materials and Methods: In this research, 18 adult male Wistar rats were used and randomly divided into 3equale groups: the  normal control, the sham, the injured. Animals in the normal control group did not received any intervention, but for the sham and injured groups, laminectomy and contusion model in segment T10 of spinal cord were accomplished, respectively. Locomotor improvement of animals in all the groups was evaluated for 20 weeks.
 
Findings: According to our investigation, comparison of the results of locomotor assessment of the second week against that of the 20th week of the spinal cord injured group without treatment demonstrated  a partial locomotor recovery, since the BBB score of lesion in these animals was 1.4 in the second week and reached up to 16 in the Twentieth week.
 
Discussion & Conclusion: Our Results showed that spontaneous locomotor recovery in animals with spinal cord defects increases after 20 weeks (from 16 21 score) in the course of  time and without any therapeutic interventions.

---

Introduction: Breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer among Iranian women. ELF5 gene as a transcription factor member of the ETS family could play a key role in breast cancer neoplasms, especially basal-like and endocrine-resistant subtypes. The changes in the gene promoter methylation pattern are considered proper targets in the therapeutic strategies. This study aimed to investigate the frequency of this epigenetic phenomenon and ELF5 gene expression as well as their association with pathologic and clinical characteristics of Iranian patients suffering from this cancer.
 
Materials & Methods: In order to investigate the ELF5 promoter methylation, 134 breast tissues were analyzed using methylation-specific PCR method. Moreover, 164 tumoral and 10 normal breast tissues retrieved from breast reduction surgery were assessed using Real-Time RT-PCR to analyze the gene expression.
Ethics code: 52d/4922, 6.10.2016
 
Findings: The data revealed that about 70% of the breast cancer tumoral specimens showed ELF5 promoter methylated pattern. Furthermore, the down-regulation of ELF5 gene expression was significantly associated with higher cancer stages, being triple-negative, and invasion.
 
Discussions & Conclusions: The results revealed that an increase in the ELF5 promoter methylation frequency in patients, compared to the control tissues, and its association with poor prognosis indicators may propose the ELF5 promoter methylation as a possible candidate in further studies to confirm the poor prognostic role of this biomarker in breast cancer.