title: Neural stem cell grafting in an animal model of chronic temporal lobe epilepsy.
abstract: Neural stem cell (NSC) transplantation into the hippocampus could offer an alternative therapy to hippocampal resection in patients with drug-resistant chronic epilepsy, which afflicts ∼30% of mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) cases. Multipotent, self-renewing NSCs could be expanded from multiple regions of the developing and adult brain, human embryonic stem cells (hESCs), and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). However, to provide a comprehensive methodology involved in testing the efficacy of transplantation of NSCs in a rat model of chronic TLE, NSCs derived from the embryonic medial ganglionic eminence (MGE) are taken as an example in this unit. The topics comprise description of the required materials, reagents and equipment, and protocols for expanding MGE-NSCs in culture, generating chronically epileptic rats, the intrahippocampal grafting, post-grafting evaluation of the effects of NSC grafts on spontaneous recurrent seizures and cognitive impairments, analyses of the yield and the fate of graft-derived cells, and the effects of NSC grafts on the host hippocampus.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Texas A&M Health Science Center Temple, TX, USA.
authors.forename: Bharathi
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Hattiangady
authors.forename: Ashok K
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Shetty
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D002908:Chronic Disease; D019411:Clinical Laboratory Techniques / Q000379:methods; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D004833:Epilepsy, Temporal Lobe / Q000473:pathology / Q000628:therapy*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008954:Models, Biological; D039902:Multipotent Stem Cells / Q000502:physiology / Q000637:transplantation; D058953:Neural Stem Cells / Q000637:transplantation*; D051381:Rats; D011916:Rats, Inbred F344; D033581:Stem Cell Transplantation / Q000379:methods*