title: Derivation of injury-responsive dendritic cells for acute brain targeting and therapeutic protein delivery in the stroke-injured rat.
abstract: Research with experimental stroke models has identified a wide range of therapeutic proteins that can prevent the brain damage caused by this form of acute neurological injury. Despite this, we do not yet have safe and effective ways to deliver therapeutic proteins to the injured brain, and this remains a major obstacle for clinical translation. Current targeted strategies typically involve invasive neurosurgery, whereas systemic approaches produce the undesirable outcome of non-specific protein delivery to the entire brain, rather than solely to the injury site. As a potential way to address this, we developed a protein delivery system modeled after the endogenous immune cell response to brain injury. Using ex-vivo-engineered dendritic cells (DCs), we find that these cells can transiently home to brain injury in a rat model of stroke with both temporal and spatial selectivity. We present a standardized method to derive injury-responsive DCs from bone marrow and show that injury targeting is dependent on culture conditions that maintain an immature DC phenotype. Further, we find evidence that when loaded with therapeutic cargo, cultured DCs can suppress initial neuron death caused by an ischemic injury. These results demonstrate a non-invasive method to target ischemic brain injury and may ultimately provide a way to selectively deliver therapeutic compounds to the injured brain.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States of America. nmanley@stanford.edu
authors.forename: Nathan C
authors.initials: NC
authors.lastname: Manley
authors.forename: Javier R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Caso
authors.forename: Melissa G
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: Works
authors.forename: Andrew B
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Cutler
authors.forename: Ilona
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Zemlyak
authors.forename: Guohua
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.forename: Carolina D
authors.initials: CD
authors.lastname: Munhoz
authors.forename: Sydney
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.forename: Shawn F
authors.initials: SF
authors.lastname: Sorrells
authors.forename: Florian V
authors.initials: FV
authors.lastname: Ermini
authors.forename: Johannes H
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Decker
authors.forename: Anthony A
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Bertrand
authors.forename: Klaus M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Dinkel
authors.forename: Gary K
authors.initials: GK
authors.lastname: Steinberg
authors.forename: Robert M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Sapolsky
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001921:Brain / Q000378:metabolism*; D001930:Brain Injuries / Q000188:drug therapy; D003713:Dendritic Cells; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D011506:Proteins / Q000008:administration & dosage* / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D051381:Rats; D020521:Stroke / Q000188:drug therapy*
chemical_list: D011506:Proteins