Environmental enrichment important factor impacting cell transplantation and brain repair

Test animals receiving ASCs improved neurobehavioral function with running and exposure to novel objects

2013-03-27

(Press-News.org) Putnam Valley, NY. (March. 27, 2013) – A team of Korean researchers investigated whether "environmental enrichment" can improve the neurobehavioral function of six week-old mice after transplantation of adipose-derived stem cells (ASCs) to treat hypoxic-ischemic brain injury, and found that brain repair (neurogenesis) was aided in some animals through exercise-induced fibroblast growth factor 2 (FGF2), a strong pro-angiogenic factor.

The post-transplantation environmental enrichment (EE) included use of a running wheel and exposure to "novel objects."

The study appears as an early e-publication for the journal Cell Transplantation, and is now freely available on-line at http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/pre-prints/ct0633seo.

"FGF2 was synergistically enhanced in the striata of mice treated with EE after ASC transplantation," said study co-author Dr. Sung-Rae Cho of the Yonsei University College of Medicine in Seoul, Korea. "The underlying mechanisms of this synergism included an enhanced repair process, such as higher engraftment of the transplanted ASCs, increased endogenous neurogenesis, and astrocytic activation coupled with the increase in FGF2."

Astrocytes, star-shaped brain cells that are also the most abundant brain cell, perform many functions, including supporting the cells that form the blood–brain barrier and providing nutrients for nervous system tissue. Multipotent ASCs have been used for promoting angiogenesis (blood vessel growth) and are also known to secrete potentially beneficial growth factors.

"Hypoxic-ischemic brain injury is a major cause of damage to the fetal and neonatal brain," said Dr. Cho. "The majority of affected children demonstrate neurodevelopment impairment. However, cell-based therapy has emerged as a potential treatment. In this study we applied EE in the chronic stage of impairment and studied its synergistic effects in the test mice at six weeks, five weeks after induced brain injury."

The authors noted that cerebral palsy has been associated with hypoxic brain injury, resulting in "considerable incidence or morbidity." They also noted that exercise has shown to be beneficial to children with CP. However, they also reported that ASC transplantation in animal models of CP has yet to be studied.

The researchers concluded that, compatible with other studies, EE increases endogenous cell migration to an ischemic injury and facilitates functional repair.

"The role of FGF2 as a mediator of the effects of exercise on the brain, and that FGF2 can be induced by physical exercise and regulated in an activity-dependent fashion, raises the possibility that FGF2 is involved in behavioral function," explained Dr. Cho. "We propose that the increase in FGF2 may provide a favorable microenvironment for repair purposes, and thus contribute to functional recovery."

They concluded that a rehabilitative strategy of cell-based therapy coupled with environmental enrichment could be effective for treating CP and other neurological diseases, including adult stroke.

"This study highlights the potential impact that combination therapies, such as stem cell transplantation and rehabilitation, could have on brain disorders, possibly due to their interaction with survival or integration of the implanted cells or to modulation of the host microenvironment," said Prof Stephen Dunnett of Cardiff University's Brain Repair Group, "but it is important to emphasise that such initial observations are a very long way from yet providing a clinical therapy. We still need to understand the mechanisms by which implanted cells and growth factors work together to enhance functional recovery, we need better animal models to test the cells that are directly relevant to the specific human disorder targeted, and there are profound technical and safety issues still to be resolved before such novel stem cell strategies can be used safely in first-in-man clinical trials". ### Contact: Sung-Rae Cho
Yonsei University College of Medicine
Research Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine
134 Shinchon-dong, Seodaemun-gu
Seoul, South Korea 120-752
Ph: 82-2-2228-3715
Fax: 82-2-363-2795
Email: srcho918@yuhs.ac

Citation: Seo, J. H.; Kim, H.; Park, E. S.; Lee, J. E.; Kim, D. W.; Kim, H. O.; Im, S. H.; Yu, J. H.; Kim, J. Y.; Lee, M-Y.; Kim, C. H.; Cho, S. R. Environmental enrichment synergistically improves functional recovery by transplanted adipose stem cells in chronic hypoxic-ischemic brain injury. Cell Transplant. Appeared or available online: February 4, 2013.

The Coeditors-in-chief for CELL TRANSPLANTATION are at the Diabetes Research Institute, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and Center for Neuropsychiatry, China Medical University Hospital, TaiChung, Taiwan. Contact, Camillo Ricordi, MD at ricordi@miami.edu or Shinn-Zong Lin, MD, PhD at shinnzong@yahoo.com.tw or David Eve, PhD at celltransplantation@gmail.com.

News release by Florida Science Communications http://www.sciencescribe.net.

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Forced methadone withdrawal in jails creates barrier to treatment in community

2013-03-27

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Methadone treatment for opioid dependence remains widely unavailable behind bars in the United States, and many inmates are forced to discontinue this evidence-based therapy, which lessens painful withdrawal symptoms. Now a new study by researchers from the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights, a collaboration of The Miriam Hospital and Brown University, offers some insight on the consequences of these mandatory withdrawal policies. According to their research, published online by the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment and appearing in the ...

Ultrafine particles raise concerns about improved cookstoves

2013-03-27

A new study raises concerns about possible health impacts of very small particles of soot released from the "improved cookstoves" that international aid agencies are promoting to replace open-fire cooking in developing countries. It appears in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology. Brian Just and colleagues point out that 3 billion people worldwide still cook meals on stoves or open fires that burn wood, animal dung or other biomass fuel. These fires, which sometimes are indoors, release air pollutants linked to 3.5 million deaths annually. Soot, or so-called ...

Stressful life events may increase stillbirth risk, NIH network study finds

2013-03-27

Pregnant women who experienced financial, emotional, or other personal stress in the year before their delivery had an increased chance of having a stillbirth, say researchers who conducted a National Institutes of Health network study. Stillbirth is the death of a fetus at 20 or more weeks of pregnancy. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, in 2006, there was one stillbirth for every 167 births. The researchers asked more than 2,000 women a series of questions, including whether they had lost a job or had a loved one in the hospital in the year before ...

Summer melt season is getting longer on the Antarctic Peninsula, new research shows.

2013-03-27

The Antarctic Peninsula – a mountainous region extending northwards towards South America – is warming much faster than the rest of Antarctica. Temperatures have risen by up to 3 oC since the 1950s – three times more than the global average. This is a result of a strengthening of local westerly winds, causing warmer air from the sea to be pushed up and over the peninsula. In contrast to much of the rest of Antarctica, summer temperatures are high enough for snow to melt. This summer melting may have important effects. Meltwater may enlarge cracks in floating ice shelves ...

Riding the exosome shuttle from neuron to muscle

2013-03-27

WORCESTER, MA – Important new research from UMass Medical School demonstrates how exosomes shuttle proteins from neurons to muscle cells where they take part in critical signaling mechanisms, an exciting discovery that means these tiny vehicles could one day be loaded with therapeutic agents, such as RNA interference (RNAi), and directly target disease-carrying cells. The study, published this month in the journal Neuron, is the first evidence that exosomes can transfer membrane proteins that play an important role in cell-to-cell signaling in the nervous system. "There ...

HIV sufferers need hepatitis safeguards

2013-03-27

Stronger protections are needed to prevent people with HIV from also becoming infected with hepatitis, researchers argue in a new study led by Michigan State University. Behaviors that put people at higher risk of contracting HIV – sharing needles, having unprotected sex or getting blood transfusions, for instance – also raise their risk of getting hepatitis B or C, diseases that attack the liver and, if untreated, can be deadly. The study, which included all registered cases of HIV in Michigan, found about four percent of HIV-positive people also had hepatitis. That's ...

New type of solar structure cools buildings in full sunlight

2013-03-27

Homes and buildings chilled without air conditioners. Car interiors that don't heat up in the summer sun. Tapping the frigid expanses of outer space to cool the planet. Science fiction, you say? Well, maybe not any more. A team of researchers at Stanford has designed an entirely new form of cooling structure that cools even when the sun is shining. Such a structure could vastly improve the daylight cooling of buildings, cars and other structures by reflecting sunlight back into the chilly vacuum of space. Their paper describing the device was published March 5 in Nano ...

How hard is it to 'de-anonymize' cellphone data?

2013-03-27

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The proliferation of sensor-studded cellphones could lead to a wealth of data with socially useful applications — in urban planning, epidemiology, operations research and emergency preparedness, among other things. Of course, before being released to researchers, the data would have to be stripped of identifying information. But how hard could it be to protect the identity of one unnamed cellphone user in a data set of hundreds of thousands or even millions? According to a paper appearing this week in Scientific Reports, harder than you might think. Researchers ...

An international study identifies new DNA variants that increase the risk for cancer

2013-03-27

The European Collaborative Oncological Gen-Environmental Study (COGS) project, whose main goal is to decipher the complex genetic bases of breast, prostate and ovarian cancers, publishes today a total of 12 research articles in several prestigious journals, including Nature Genetics, Nature Communications, The American Journal of Human Genetics and PLOS Genetics. Using mass sequencing techniques, the study has identified up to 80 new regions of the genome associated with an increased susceptibility to developing breast, prostate and ovarian cancers. The conclusions are ...

New system to restore wetlands could reduce massive floods, aid crops

2013-03-27

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Engineers at Oregon State University have developed a new interactive system to create networks of small wetlands in Midwest farmlands, which could help the region prevent massive spring floods and also retain water and mitigate droughts in a warming climate. The planning tool, which is being developed and tested in a crop-dominated watershed near Indianapolis, is designed to identify the small areas best suited to wetland development, optimize their location and size, and restore a significant portion of the region's historic water storage ability by ...

Environmental enrichment important factor impacting cell transplantation and brain repair

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: