About the Authors

Michael P. Hefferan

Affiliation Neuroregeneration Laboratory, Department of Anesthesiology, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America

Jan Galik

Affiliations Institute of Neurobiology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Košice, Slovakia, Institute of Biology and Ecology, Faculty of Science, Pavol Jozef Safarik University, Košice, Slovakia

Osamu Kakinohana

Affiliation Neuroregeneration Laboratory, Department of Anesthesiology, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America

Gabriela Sekerkova

Affiliation Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

Camila Santucci

Affiliation Neuroregeneration Laboratory, Department of Anesthesiology, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America

Silvia Marsala

Affiliation Neuroregeneration Laboratory, Department of Anesthesiology, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America

Roman Navarro

Affiliation Neuroregeneration Laboratory, Department of Anesthesiology, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America

Marian Hruska-Plochan

Affiliations Neuroregeneration Laboratory, Department of Anesthesiology, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America, Institute of Animal Physiology and Genetics, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Libechov, Czech Republic, Department of Cell Biology, Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

Karl Johe

Affiliation Neuralstem Inc, Rockville, Maryland, United States of America

Eva Feldman

Affiliation Department of Neurology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States of America

Don W. Cleveland

Affiliation Ludwig Institute and Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, School of Medicine, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America

Martin Marsala

mmarsala@ucsd.edu

Affiliations Neuroregeneration Laboratory, Department of Anesthesiology, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America, Institute of Neurobiology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Košice, Slovakia

Competing Interests

KJ is employed by Neuralstem Inc. and has financial interest in the company. Neuralstem has patented technology of isolation and expansion of human fetal neural precursors and is currently conducting a clinical trial in ALS patients receiving spinal grafts of human spinal stem cells. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, as detailed online in the guide for authors.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: MM MH EF DWC. Performed the experiments: MH OK SM CS GS JG RN MHP. Analyzed the data: MH MM JG RN. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: KJ GS. Wrote the paper: MM MH.