Transplanted epidermal neural crest stem cell in a peripheral nerve gap / 生物工程学报

ABSTRACT

Neural crest stem cells originated from hair follicle (epidermal neural crest stem cell, EPI-NCSC) are easy to obtain and have potentials to differentiate into various tissues, which make them eminent seed cells for tissue engineering. EPI-NCSC is now used to repair nerve injury, especially, the spinal cord injury. To investigate their effects on repairing peripheral nerve injury, EPI-NCSC from a GFP-SD rat were primarily cultured on coated dishes and on a poly lactic acid coglycolic acid copolymer (PLGA) membrane. Methyl thiazolyl tetrazolium (MTT) assay showed that the initial adhesion rate of EPI-NCSC was 89.7% on PLGA membrane, and the relative growth rates were 89.3%, 87.6%, 85.6%, and 96.6% on the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th day respectively. Cell cycles and DNA ploidy analysis demonstrated that cell cycles and proliferation indexes of cultured EPI-NCSC had the same variation pattern on coated dishes and PLGA membrane. Then cultured EPI-NCSC were mixed with equal amount of extracellular matrix and injected into a PLGA conduit to connect a 10 mm surgery excision gap of rat sciatic nerve, Dulbecco's Modified Eagle's medium (DMEM) was used to substitute EPI-NCSC in the control group. After four weeks of transplantation, the defected sciatic nerve achieved a histological restoration, the sensory function of rat hind limb was partly recovered and the sciatic nerve index was also improved. The above results showed that a PLGA conduit filled with EPI-NCSC has a good repair effect on the peripheral nerve injury.