Recovery of CNS Pathway Innervating the Sciatic Nerve Following Transplantation of Human Neural Stem Cells in Rat Spinal Cord Injury

Abstract

Stem cell research has been attained a greater attention in most fields of medicine due to its potential for many incurable diseases through replacing or helping the regeneration of damaged cells or tissues. Here, we demonstrated the functional recovery and structural connection of the central nervous system pathway innervating the sciatic nerve after total transection of the spinal cord followed by the transplantation of human neural stem cells (hNSC) in the injured rat spinal cord site. The limb function of hNSC-treated group recovered dramatically compared with that in the sham group by Basso-Beattie-Bresnahan (BBB) scores. Transplanted hNSC differentiated into astrocytes and neurons in the injured site. In addition, immunohistochemistry for growth-associated protein 43 showed axonal regeneration in the injured spinal cord site. The pseudorabies viral-Ba (PRV-Ba) tracing method revealed that transplanted hNSC and their differentiated neurons showed positive labeling after sciatic nerve injection. In addition, the PRV-Ba labeling was also observed in several nuclei in the brain innervating the sciatic nerve. This result implies that the rat CNS motor pathway could be reconstructed by hNSC transplantation, and it may contribute to the functional recovery of the limb.