Chapter 20 Cross-species grafting and cell culture of Rhesus monkey fetal spinal cord and cerebral cortex

Abstract

Publisher Summary Experiments using the implantation of fetal brain and spinal cord into lesioned and unlesioned adult and neonatal rat spinal cord suggest that this technique may prove beneficial in repairing the injured spinal cord. This chapter describes and demonstrates that fetal brain, midbrain, and spinal cord can be successfully implanted into adult host rodent spinal cord. Important factors in the success particularly of spinal-to-spinal grafts appear to be the embryonic age of the implant and the method of the implantation process. Latest studies suggest that the cross-species transplantation of fetal human tissues to the rat brain ventricles may provide a possible model for implant development in a host tissue. However, some investigators have not found immunosuppression to be necessary in xenografts even for human to rat cerebral ventricle grafts. The studies at this point suggest that effective immunosuppression is necessary for the normal development of monkey to rat cross-species central nervous system (CNS) grafts, and may further indicate that an immune reaction may interfere with graft development in terms of the types of cells surviving and their course of differentiation.