Impact of a preceding excitotoxic lesion and treatment with ciliary neurotrophic factor on striatal graft survival
Petersén Å, Emgård M and Brundin P.
Brain Research Bulletin 50: 275-281 (1999)
Abstract
The survival of grafted embryonic striatal tissue, dissected from the lateral ganglionic eminence, depends on the status of the host striatum. We found significantly larger volumes of surviving graft tissue and of striatal-like tissue (P-zone) within the graft, when the host striatum had been subjected to an excitotoxic lesion prior to transplantation surgery. Concomitantly the numbers of surviving grafted cells, assessed in both cresyl violet-stained sections and in sections stained with an immunohistochemical marker for striatal neurons, increased as compared to when graft tissue was placed in an intact unlesioned striatum. Finally, we examined the impact of treatment of the donor tissue with ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF) on graft survival. CNTF has previously been shown to protect striatal neurons against excitotoxic insults both in vitro and in vivo, but it did not improve striatal graft survival when added to the cell suspension prior to implantation.