Stem cell therapy shows promise for repairing brain damage after stroke

Employing stem cells to heal damaged brain tissue 

"Recovery can be hard to determine in mice, so we needed to see these little differences," Rust said. "The unbiased view we got through this deep learning tool gave us a lot more detail about this complex process."

The team found that treated mice fully recovered the fine motor skills tested in the climbing task five weeks after the transplants. By the end of the study, their gait also improved significantly compared to mice that received a sham surgery.

Clues among the new brain cells that develop

The team also explored the fate of the transplanted stem cells, finding that the majority had become GABAergic neurons. This is a possible indication that the local environment where the stroke injured the brain may help steer the development of the neural stem cells.

Rust and his colleagues also analyzed the interactions between the transplanted cells and other cells in the brains of the mice. They found strong activity in several signaling pathways that were shown in prior studies to be associated with regenerating neurons, forming connections between neurons, and guiding how neurons branch out.

"Mechanistic insight can be quite important if we seek to inform new therapies or improve emerging ones," Rust said. "Understanding the mechanisms allows us to think about adapting a drug that regulates them - perhaps one that's already clinically approved for a different disease. It could open up a whole new wave of therapies."

The team is currently investigating other ways to increase activity in the pathways identified in the study and evaluating the results of the transplant in mice for periods longer than five weeks.

About this study 

The study's first author is Rebecca Weber of the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich. The co-corresponding author is Christian Tackenberg of the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich. Other co-authors are Beatriz Achón Buil, Nora Rentsch, Patrick Perron, Stefanie Halliday, Chantal Bodenmann, Kathrin Zürcher, Daniela Uhr, Debora Meier, Siri Peter, Melanie Generali of the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich; Allison Bosworth, Mingzi Zhang and Kassandra Kisler of the Keck School of Medicine; Shuo Lin and Markus Rüegg of the University of Basel in Switzerland; and Roger Nitsch of Neurimmune, a Swiss biopharmaceutical company.

The study received support from the Swiss 3R Competence Center; the Swiss National Science Foundation; the Neuroscience Center Zurich at the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich; and the Maxi Foundation.

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Keck School of Medicine of USC

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