17-07-08(13:15:55)
Authors:
Büchele F 1, Papazoglou A 1, Jiang W 1, Garcia J 1, Nikkhah G 1
Institutions:
Department of Stereotactic Neurosurgery, Laboratory of Molecular Neurosurgery, Neurocentre, University Hospital Freiburg, Breisacher Str. 64, 79106 Freiburg, Germany
Title of abstract : Two-strep grafting – a new method to enhance cell survival and study graft development in a rat model of Parkinson’s disease
Abstract text:
Two-step grafting is a new transplantation approach where standard amounts of cells are divided in two and transplanted in two separate sessions within a certain time interval.
Previous studies from our group revealed that two-step grafting results in a significantly higher cell survival and graft volume compared to the standard transplantation protocol in the 6-OHDA rat model of Parkinson’s disease.
The aim of the present study is to give an insight into the mechanisms causing this interesting effect by evaluating the role of each graft independently. To achieve this, we doubled the amount of cells in the first graft and used GFP transgenic Lewis rat embryos as donors to identify the second graft.
40 6-OHDA-lesioned adult Sprague Dawley rats were divided into 3 groups, each with an interim of 2, 5 or 9 days between the 2 transplantation sessions. Each group was sub-divided into 2 sub-groups with either 200,000 (GFP-) + 200,000 (GFP+) cells or 400,000 (GFP-) + 200,000 (GFP+) cells. Transplantation effects were evaluated by drug-induced rotation tests, performed 2, 3 and 6 weeks and by cylinder test, performed 8 weeks after the first transplantation. The animals were sacrificed directly afterwards and processed for immunohistochemistry.
In drug-induced rotations all groups showed significant compensation. No significant difference was fount between the sub-groups with more or less transplanted cells.
This is an ongoing study and the evaluation of survival, structural and functional integration of the two grafts will be presented in the conference.
