Intraocular grafting of cultured brain tissue: growth, vascularization and neuron survival in locus coeruleus and cortex cerebri

Locus coeruleus and cortex cerebri from embryonic (ED 17) and newborn rats were kept 4 days in tissue culture under conditions maintaining organotypic features and then transplanted to the anterior chamber of the eye of adult rats. Vascularization from the host iris was delayed in pre-cultured grafts as compared to directly grafted material. In spite of this, several morphological parameters developed normally. Thus, pre-cultured grafts grew considerably in oculo. Falck-Hillarp histochemistry showed that grafts of cortex cerebri received an adrenergic innervation from the host iris and that locus coeruleus grafts contained central adrenergic neurons capable of innervating a sympathetically denervated host iris. The successful combination of tissue culture and intraocular transplantation should permit the selective advantages of both techniques to be applied to the same tissue pieces, generating new information unobtainable by either method alone.