Abstract
Although CNS axons have the capacity to regenerate after spinal cord injury when provided with a permissive substrate, the lack of appropriate synaptic target sites for regenerating fibers may limit restoration of spinal circuitry. Studies in our laboratory are focused on utilizing neural stem cells to provide new synaptic target sites for regenerating spinal axons following injury. As an initial step, rat neural precursor cells genetically engineered to overexpress the tyrosine kinase C (trkC) neurotrophin receptor were transplanted into the intact rat spinal cord to evaluate their survival and differentiation. Cells were either pretreated in vitro prior to transplantation with trkC ligand neurotrophin-3 (NT-3) to initiate differentiation or exposed to NT-3 in vivo following transplantation via gelfoam or Oxycel
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 297-307 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | Cell transplantation |
Volume | 11 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2002 |
Keywords
- Neural precursor cells
- Neural transplantation
- Neurotrophin-3
- Spinal cord
- Stem cells
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Cell Biology
- Transplantation