胚胎神经干细胞移植治疗阿尔茨海默病

Embryonic neural stem cell transplantation for Alzheimer’s disease

BACKGROUND:More recently, stem cell therapy has become an issue of concern. Exogenous neural stem cell transplantation brings new hope for the treatment of nervous system injury by self-replication and differentiation to complement and replace damaged or dead nerve cells.OBJECTIVE:To explore the therapeutic efficacy of neural stem cell transplantation on Alzheimer’s disease.METHODS:Thirty APP/PS1 mice with Alzheimer’s disease were randomly assigned into model group, cell solution transplantation group or cell transplantation group (n=10 per group). Another 10 C57BL/6 mice were selected as controls. Embryos of C57BL/6 mice at 18 embryonic days were taken to make neural stem cell suspension followed by transfection using lentiviral vectors carrying GFP gene at different multiplicities of infection (1, 5, 10, 15, 20). Afterwards, GFP-transfected neural stem cells were implanted into the hippocampus of Alzheimer’s disease mice in the cell transplantation group, while the same volume of complete medium was injected into the hippocampus of mice in the cell solution transplantation group. Morris water maze test was performed at 2 weeks after cell transplantation, and brain tissues of mice was taken and detected histologically at 4 weeks after cell transplantation. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:Compared with the control group, the escape latency was significantly higher, and the number of crossings over the target quadrant was lower in the other three groups (P < 0.05). Compared with the cell solution transplantation and model groups, in contrast, the escape latency was significantly lower, and the number of crossings over the target quadrant was significantly higher in the cell transplantation group (P < 0.05). Four weeks after transplantation, more intact neurons were found in the cell transplantation group as compared with the model group. These findings indicate that neural stem cell transplantation can improve behavior and morphology performance of mice with Alzheimer’s disease.