Chapter 37 Blood-brain and blood-cerebrospinal fluid alterations following neural transplantation

Abstract

Publisher Summary The advent of a foreign graft can alter certain vascular properties and constituents of the host brain—namely, the blood-brain (BBB) or blood-cerebrospinal fluid (BCB) barriers. This chapter describes and demonstrates the changes in vascular permeability histochemically after grafting of fetal central nervous system (CNS) tissue or adrenal medullary tissue. The chapter also presents data concerning alterations in the BCB utilizing the technique of high-performance immunoaffinity chromatography (HPIAC) of CSF samples, and focuses on the vascular process in brain grafts and the effects of such neovascularization on the barrier properties in both host and graft. The transplantation of fetal CNS is quite different from autonomic tissue transplants, both physiologically and developmentally. When fetal brain is placed into host brain, particularly at brain surfaces where pial vessels have BBB properties, there appears to be a phenotypic change in certain endothelial cell properties following the neovascularization process. Entry of the potentially neuroactive compounds from the blood into the extracellular fluid (ECF) or CSF could change the host brain's controlled fluid environment, and it would seem likely that endogenous blood borne compounds also have access to the brain. However, how graft-produced products enter into the brain remains to be determined.