Systemic transplantation of mesenchymal stem cells can reduce cognitive and motor deficits in rats with unilateral lesions of the neostriatum

Abstract

Huntington's disease (HD) is an inherited neurodegenerative disorder that usually occurs in the third or fourth decades of life. Stem cell therapy is one of the approaches for HD treatment. Since mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have the ability to migrate into the lesioned site, we transplanted rat bone marrow-derived MSCs intravenously, following unilateral intrastriatal lesion made by quinolinic acid (QA) in Wistar rats. QA administration caused widespread neuropathological deficits similar to those found in HD, including impairments in motor and cognitive functions. Animals receiving MSCs exhibited significant improvement in motor and cognitive performance compared with sham group animals that did not receive cells. Animals were tested by apomorphine-induced rotations, beam walk, cylinder and hang wire tests at different times after cell transplantation. Results indicate that systemic transplantation of MSCs can significantly reduce the behavioral abnormalities of these animals. This method of systemic injection has a great advantage over invasive surgical techniques for transplantation of cells at the lesioned site.

Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells Prolong Survival and Ameliorate Motor Deficit through Trophic Support in Huntington's Disease Mouse Models

“…The chemotactic signals and homing capabilities of MSCs are well-proven [29], but the particular mechanisms and molecules involved are still unclear. Some recent studies focusing on the transplantation of MSCs in different HD models have highlighted the potential of MSCs in the amelioration of striatal degeneration [30] and improving behavioral abnormalities in QA−lesioned rats [31]. Furthermore, MSC-transplantation combined with neurotrophic factor secretion showed therapeutic effects in different HD models [28], [32].…”

Transdifferentiation: a cell and molecular reprogramming process

“…For example, organ or tissue transplantation (Haberal et al 1999;Broelsch et al 2003), embryonic and adult stem cells (Nishikawa et al 2008;Nelson et al 2008;Edalatmanesh et al 2010;Neshati et al 2010) or induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells (Takahashi and Yamanaka 2006) are potential therapeutic means which can be used for clinical purposes, but have some drawbacks, including lack of available tissues for transplantation, ethical controversies in using fetal tissues and embryonic stem cells (Adams et al 1996), oncogenic concerns in using embryonic stem cells, iPS cells and adult stem cells Jiang et al 2008;Ghosh et al 2011;Soltanian and Matin 2011), practical difficulties in identifying and isolating adult stem cells, low efficiency in production of iPS cells ), inflammation induction of iPS-derived products (Zhao et al 2011), and also immune response (Yañez et al 2006). In view of these disadvantages, transdifferentiation appears as a promising alternative that addresses most of these issues.…”

Histological Comparative Study between the Possible Effect of Stem Cells and α- Lipoic Acid on Rat Testes Treated by Cyclophosphamide

“…Cells were incubated at 37° C in 5% humidified carbon dioxide for 12 to 14 days as primary culture or upon formation of large colonies.When large colonies developed (80-90% confluence), cultures were washed twice with phosphate buffer saline (PBS) and cells were trypsinized with 0.25%trypsin for 5 minutes at 37• C. After centrifugation (at 2400 rpm for 20 minutes), cells were resuspended with serum supplemented medium and incubated in 50 cm2 culture flask Falcon. The resulting cultures were referred to as first passage cultures [15] .…”