Authors: Verena Johann Johannes Schiefer Christian Sass Jörg Mey Gary Brook Alexander Krüttgen Christiane Schlangen Christian Bernreuther Melitta Schachner Marcel Dihné Christoph M Kosinski
Publish Date: 2006/09/30
Volume: 177, Issue: 4, Pages: 458-470
Abstract
Cell replacement therapies for neurodegenerative diseases using multipotent neural stem cells NSCs require above all a good survival of the graft In this study we unilaterally injected quinolinic acid QA into the striatum of adult mice and transplanted syngeneic NSCs of enhanced green fluorescent proteintransgenic mice into the lesioned striatum The injection of QA leads to an excitotoxic lesion with selective cell death of the medium sized spiny neurons the same cells that are affected in Huntington’s disease In order to investigate the best timing of transplantation for the survival of donor cells we transplanted the stem cells at 2 7 and 14 days after injury In addition the influence of graft preparation prior to transplantation ie intact neurospheres versus dissociated cell suspension on graft survival was investigated By far the best survival was found with the combination of early transplantation ie 2 days after QAlesion with the use of neurospheres instead of dissociated cell suspension This might be due to the different states of host’s astrocytic and microglia activation which we found to be moderate at 2 but pronounced at 7 and 14 days after QAlesion We also investigated brain derived neurotrophic factor BDNFexpression in the striatum after QAlesion and found no significant change in BDNF proteinlevel We conclude that already the method of graft preparation of NSCs for transplantation as well as the timing of the transplantation procedure strongly affects the survival of the donor cells when grafted into the QAlesioned striatum of adult mice
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