Effect of transplants of retinal pigment epithelial cells from adult human eye on degenerative processes in the brain of rats with experimental acute hypoxia.

Stimulation of cell regeneration in the brain and eye retina in various degenerative processes is a pressing problem in neurobiology. A promising approach is transplantation of somatic cells reprogrammed towards neural lineage. We studied the effect of transplantation of retinal pigment epithelial cells from adult human eye transdifferentiated in culture on degenerative processes in the brain of rats subjected to acute hypoxia. Immunohistochemical and molecular genetic analysis suggests that retinal pigment epithelial cells transdifferentiate in vitro and express markers of low-differentiated neural cells. The cells transplanted into rat brain survive for at least 20 days. During this period, they stimulate compensatory and reparative processes that protected cortical neurons in the recipients from hypoxia-induced degeneration.