Spinal cord injuries (SCI) result in devastating loss of function, because spinal cord of human beings never regenerates after injury. People believed in this dogma for a long time. There is an emerging hope for regeneration-based therapy of the damaged spinal cord due to the progress of neuroscience and regenerative medicine including stem cell biology. Stimulated by the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awarded for Shinya Yamanaka and Sir John Gurdon, there is an increasing interest in the iPS cells (iPSCs) and reprogramming technologies in medical science. While iPS cells are expected to open new era providing enormous opportunities in the biomedical sciences in terms of cell therapies for regenerative medicine, safety-related concerns for iPS cell-based cell therapy should be resolved prior to the clinical application of iPSCs. Especially, some previous reports indicated risk factors for the use of iPSCs, such as genetic and epigenetic abnormalities that could take place during reprogramming or maintenance in subsequent cell culture. Of particular relevance is the potential tumorigenicity and immunogenicity associated with iPSC-based cell therapy. In this symposium, I would like to summarize previous efforts in the field as well as the current status of iPSC-based cell therapy for repair of the damaged central nervous system, with a special emphasis on SCI. Furthermore, I would like to explain our upcoming clinical trial of iPSC-derived neural stem cell transplantation for sub-acute SCI patients.