TRANSPLANTATION OF HYPERTHERMIC PRECONDITIONING OLFACTORY ENSHEATHING CELLS COMBINED WITH NEURAL STEM CELLS IN THE TREATMENT OF CENTRAL NERVE INJURY.

Abstract This study aims to observe the effect of the transplantation of hyperthermic preconditioning (HPC) olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs) at 40°C combined with neural stem cells (NSCs) in the treatment of spinal cord injury (SCI), based on the OECs and NSCs taken from the olfactory bulbs and cerebral cortex of newborn rats. Forty-two female Sprague Dawley (SD) rats were randomly divided into: control group, NSCs+OECs without HPC group and NSCs+HPC OECs group. Firstly, hemisected spinal cord injury model was established; the motor function recovery of the right lower limb of the rats was compared by Basso-Beatie-Bresnahan rating (BBB rating), climbing score and running time on a rotating platform during the whole experiment. At one day, two weeks and four weeks after transplantation, two rats were randomly selected from each group for section preparation. Hematoxylin and eosin (HE) staining was performed on the sections to observe and analyze the pathological changes of the spinal cord tissue, and bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) labeling was used to observe the distribution of transplanted cells. The results demonstrated that, BBB score of the rats that were treated by transplantation of NSCs combined with HPC OCEs was distinctly improved; a rapid increase of BBB score was found two weeks after transplantation, while BBB score had slightly increased six weeks later. BBB score of the control group and the NSCs+OECs without HPC group was found with a slight increase, especially in the control group. BBB score of NSCs+HPC OECs was significantly higher than in the control group and the NSCs+OECs without HPC group at the 2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th and 12th week after treatment (P<0.05). Climbing tests and detection of running time after 4 weeks and 6 weeks demonstrated that, the recovery of limb function of the NSCs+HPC OECs group was better than the other groups (P<0.05). HE staining results of NSCs+HPC OECs indicated that, cells of the spinal cord were neatly arranged, close to normal. BrdU labeling results revealed that, transplanted cells were found in injury tissue, indicating that they were involved in the spinal cord repair. This study proves that, the effect of NSCs combined with HPC OECs in the treatment of SCI is better than NSCs combined with OECs without HPC, and the ratio of NSCs differentiating to neuron after inducing HPC OECs supernate is higher than that after inducing OECs supernate without HPC.