engleski

Therapeutic application of neural stem cells in a rat model of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

OBJECTIVE: To get insight in the possible therapeutic application of neural stem cells in a rat model of ALS. BACKGROUND: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive and terminal neurodegenerative disease defined by fast deterioration of motoneurons. Although represented with relatively low prevalence of 0.1 ‰ , a fact that majority of affected individuals die paralyzed only 3 to 4 years after the first observed symptoms attracts high attention of the wide biomedical community. The most often used experimental model is superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1) rat mutant, characterized by high uniformity of pathological features and high similarity to human disease. RESULTS: In order to get insight in the possible therapeutic application of neural stem cells in a rat model of ALS, specific protocol was developed. It was based on isolation of neural stem cells from the cortex of 16 days old wild type rat embryos. Cultivation of small to medium sized neurospheres in neural stem specific medium enabled to obtain high number of undifferentiated and viable cell, as it was required that injected cells retain capability to migrate to the region affected by neurodegeneration. Moreover, as ALS is not defined by strict regional localization, it was of high interest to test whether blood delivery could be efficient in reaching different regions of motocortex and spinal cord. To test this approach, 10 millions of cells were injected in SOD1 mutant rat tail vein. After 3 days, injected cells were found scattered in the cortex and hippocampus. CONCLUSION: Presence of injected neural stem cells in different regions of ALS affected rat brain represents important step further in cell transplantation therapy of this neurodegenerative disease.

ALS; stem cell therapy

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