Preterm birth is a global public health problem. A large number of preterm infants survive with preterm white matter injury (PWMI), which leads to neurological deficits, and has multifaceted etiology, clinical course, monitoring, and outcomes. The principal upstream insults leading to PWMI initiation are hypoxia‐ischemia and infection and/or inflammation and the key target cells are late oligodendrocyte precursor cells. Current PWMI treatments are mainly supportive, and thus have little effect in terms of protecting the immature brain or repairing injury to improve long‐term outcomes. Umbilical cord blood (UCB) cells comprise abundant immunomodulatory and stem cells, which have the potential to reduce brain injury, mainly due to anti‐inflammatory and immunomodulatory mechanisms, and also through their release of neurotrophic or growth factors to promote endogenous neurogenesis. In this review, we briefly summarize PWMI pathogenesis and pathophysiology, and the specific properties of different cell types in UCB. We further explore the potential mechanism by which UCB can be used to treat PWMI, and discuss the advantages of and potential issues related to UCB cell therapy. Finally, we suggest potential future studies of UCB cell therapy in preterm infants.

中文翻译：

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用于治疗早产白质损伤的脐带血细胞：潜在影响和治疗选择

早产是一个全球性的公共卫生问题。大量早产儿因早产白质损伤 (PWMI) 幸存下来，导致神经功能缺损，并且具有多方面的病因、临床过程、监测和结果。导致 PWMI 启动的主要上游损伤是缺氧缺血和感染和/或炎症，关键靶细胞是晚期少突胶质细胞前体细胞。目前的 PWMI 治疗主要是支持性的，因此在保护未成熟大脑或修复损伤以改善长期结果方面效果不大。脐带血 (UCB) 细胞包含丰富的免疫调节和干细胞，主要由于抗炎和免疫调节机制，它们具有减少脑损伤的潜力，并且还通过它们释放神经营养或生长因子来促进内源性神经发生。在这篇综述中，我们简要总结了 PWMI 的发病机制和病理生理学，以及 UCB 中不同细胞类型的具体特性。我们进一步探讨了 UCB 可用于治疗 PWMI 的潜在机制，并讨论了 UCB 细胞治疗的优势和潜在问题。最后，我们建议对早产儿进行 UCB 细胞疗法的潜在未来研究。