Health & body · 1997
Can selecting a smaller region of fetal rat brain tissue enrich the neurons sought for Parkinson’s transplantation research?
Yes. Dissecting the medial region of embryonic day 14 rat ventral mesencephalon yielded 8–10% dopamine neurons, significantly higher than in lateral tissue (2%) or whole ventral mesencephalon (4–5%).
Details
The abstract describes fetal tissue transplantation into patients with Parkinson’s disease as using the entire ventral mesencephalon (VM) as donor tissue. However, this mixture of cell types contains a relatively low proportion of the dopamine (DA) neurons relevant to treatment.
In an experimental comparison using embryonic day 14 rat VM, the researchers used differential dissection to isolate the medial region. This yielded a significantly higher proportion of DA neurons (8–10%) than lateral VM (2%) or whole VM (4–5%).
Medial VM also contained a larger number of a specific DA neuron subpopulation: aldehyde dehydrogenase-positive neurons, designated AHD in the abstract, that project to the dorsolateral motor region of the striatum.
The researchers conclude that selective dissection of fetal medial VM selectively enriches DA neurons in cell preparations useful for transplantation in Parkinson’s disease.
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