Spinal cord injury (SCI),which lead to sensory and motor function impairment,refers to traumatic injury to the spinal cord.The main pathophysiological changing process can be divided into two phases:the preliminary injury phase and the secondary injury phase.Organ dysfunction,tissue necrosis,sensory and motor function of irreversible lesions and even death can be led by SCI and the secondary injury phase.In order to prevent the secondary injury and repair the injured central nerve system,medication,surgery,biomaterials transplantation and autologous peripheral nerve transplantation have been widely studied.However,these strategies can only reach a certain level of symptoms relieve and neural restoration,which cannot reach clinical satisfaction.Therefore,SCI has been treated as a global difficult and attractive topic.Since stem cells have the potential ability to promote neurons regeneration and/or even differentiate into neural like cells,they may also have anti-inflammatory,anti-apoptotic,anti-oxidative stress,and promote secretion of trophic factors and vascularization,they brought new hope for SCI patients.Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have attracted many researchers' attention for their multi characteristics including widely distribution,strong differentiation potential,easily isolating and storing and ethics avoiding.It has been proved that MSCs are effective for repairing SCI in vivo and vitro.In the latest 3 years,with the consummation of several clinical trials,a good prospect have been showed in the translation of MSCs transplantation into clinic.MSCs have been proved to have a significant prospect for clinical translation.At the same time,more specific issues were also raised.Thus,based on the latest 3 years clinical research and the author team's latest experimental results,we reviewed the MSCs on treating SCI from basic science to clinical trial and discussed its future development.