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Surgical techniques influence local environment of injured spinal cord and cause various grafted cell survival and integration
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Surgical techniques influence local environment of injured spinal cord and cause various grafted cell survival and integration

Shaoping Hou, Tatiana M Saltos, Idiata W Iredia and Veronica J Tom
Journal of neuroscience methods, v 293, pp 144-150
01 Jan 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneumeth.2017.09.014
PMID: 28947264
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
url
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneumeth.2017.09.014View
Accepted (AM)Open Access (License Unspecified),  Open

Abstract

Animals Brain Stem - embryology Brain Stem - transplantation Cell Survival - physiology Cicatrix - etiology Cicatrix - pathology Cicatrix - physiopathology Disease Models, Animal Embryonic Stem Cells - transplantation Female Graft Survival - physiology Microsurgery Neural Stem Cells - transplantation Neurosurgical Procedures Rats, Inbred F344 Rats, Transgenic Spinal Cord - pathology Spinal Cord - physiopathology Spinal Cord - surgery Spinal Cord Injuries - pathology Spinal Cord Injuries - physiopathology Spinal Cord Injuries - surgery Spinal Cord Regeneration - physiology Suction
Cellular transplantation to repair a complete spinal cord injury (SCI) is tremendously challenging due to the adverse local milieu for graft survival and growth. Results from cell transplantation studies yield great variability, which may possibly be due to the surgical techniques employed to induce an SCI. In order to delineate the influence of surgery on such inconsistency, we compared lesion morphology and graft survival as well as integration from different lesion methodologies of SCI. Surgical techniques, including a traditional approach cut+microaspiration, and two new approaches, cut alone as well as crush, were employed to produce a complete SCI, respectively. Approximately half of the rats in each group received injury only, whereas the other half received grafts of fetal brainstem cells into the lesion gap. Eight weeks after injury with or without graft, histological analysis showed that the cut+microaspiration surgery resulted in larger lesion cavities and severe fibrotic scars surrounding the cavity, and cellular transplants rarely formed a tissue bridge to penetrate the barrier. In contrast, the majority of cases treated with cut alone or crush exhibited smaller cavities and less scarring; the grafts expanded and blended extensively with the host tissue, which often built continuous tissue bridging the rostral and caudal cords. Scarring and cavitation were significantly reduced when microaspiration was avoided in SCI surgery, facilitating graft/host tissue fusion for signal transmission. The result suggests that microaspiration frequently causes severe scars and cavities, thus impeding graft survival and integration.

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8 citations in Web of Science
9 citations in Scopus

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Web of Science research areas
Biochemical Research Methods
Neurosciences
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