Abstract
Poor survival of transplanted dopaminergic (DA) neurons remains a serious obstacle to the success of cell replacement therapy as an alternative to the current treatments for Parkinson’s disease. We have examined the temporal release profile of an inflammatory cytokine, interleukin-1beta (IL-1β) following transplantation of fetal mesencephalic tissue into the rat striatum. The amounts of IL-1β released in vivo when added to cultures of embryonic DA neurons, did not significantly reduce the survival of DA neurons in vitro, and inclusion of the naturally-occurring IL-1 receptor antagonist, IL-1ra, did not appear to affect the numbers of surviving DA neurons present after 5 days in vitro. Neither did inclusion of IL-1ra in cell suspensions during transplantation increase the survival of transplanted fetal DA neurons. Thus, although IL-1β is released following implantation of a neural transplant, we suggest that this pro-inflammatory cytokine does not play an active role in reducing survival of transplanted DA neurons, unlike other cytokines such as tumor necrosis factor α. Modulation of IL-1β activity, therefore, will not offer significant improvements to neural transplantation as a treatment for PD.
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