Huntington's Disease Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Huntington's Disease, including details on genetics, causes, symptoms, treatment.

Noninvasive method of immortalized neural stem-like cell transplantation in an experimental model of Huntington's disease.

Lee ST, Park JE, Lee K, Kang L, Chu K, Kim SU, Kim M, Roh JK

Department of Neurology, Seoul National University Hospital, Neuroscience Research Institute of SNUMRC, 28 Yongondong, Chongnoku, Seoul 110-744, South Korea.

A loss of neostriatal neurons is a characteristic of Huntington's disease (HD), and neural tissue transplantation has been performed directly into the striatum. Since the neural stem cells have ability to migrate into the lesion site, we administered immortalized neural stem-like cells (NSC) into the ventricle or via a tail vein following unilateral intrastriatal quinolinic acid lesioning in Sprague-Dawley rats. To identify transplanted NSC, cells were encoded with lac Z and beta-galactosidase histochemistry was performed. lac Z+ cells were detected in the lesioned striatum but tissue damage or tumor formation was not observed. This study shows that NSC migrate into the striatum, either from ventricle or from the systemic circulation, providing less invasive routes for stem cell application in HD.

Published 10 March 2006 in J Neurosci Methods, 152(1): 250-4.
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