Abstract:

The vascular stem cell niche: roadmap for transplanted neural progenitor cells during environmental enrichment?
One of the challenges of cell transplantation into the brain is poor graft survival. Graft survival may be affected by an immunological response of the host towards transplanted cells, shear injury to cells during transplantation or an unsuitable micro-environment for the transplanted cell type. Prof. Ben Waldau (UC Davis Medical Center, USA) proposed that neural progenitor cells have an affinity to laminin, which is commonly used to maintain neural progenitorsas monolayer cultures in vitro. The affinity of neural progenitor cells to laminin is based on thehigh expression ofα6β1 integrin, which is required for binding of neural progenitors to endothelial cells. They observed that transplanted neural progenitor cells are closely associated with the vascular stem cell niche and responsive to environmental enrichment. Therefore, survival of neural progenitor cell grafts in humans may be enhanced by physical, occupational or speech therapy to increase regional brain perfusion and help promote survival of transplanted cells in desired target areas. Further research is needed to study whether the association of transplanted dentate progenitor cells with the vascular stem cell niche and the responsiveness to environmental enrichment persists over time.