Transplantation of neural stem cells in the mouse model of ischemic brain stroke and expression of genes involved in programmed cell death.

Aim: To analyze how neural stem cells (NSC) transplantation in the stroke-affected mouse brain influences the expression of genes involved in apoptosis-inducing factor (AIF)-mediated cell death – apoptosis inducing factor mitochondria associated 1 (), ring finger protein 146 (), and cyclophilin A (); necroptosis –receptor interaction protein kinase 1 (), , and mixed-lineage kinase domain-like protein (); and apoptosis – Caspase 3 () and .

Methods: Four groups of animals were used to obtain mRNA for quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction analysis: healthy animals (n = 3), animals with stroke (n = 4), animals with stroke treated by stem cell transplantation (n = 7), and animals with stroke treated by proliferation-supporting medium (n = 5). Ischemic brain injury was induced by transient left middle cerebral artery occlusion. Statistical analysis was performed using one-way analysis of variance with Tukey test.

Results: NSC transplantation in the stroke-affected mouse brain significantly increased the expression of ( < 0.05), a gene-encoding protein with well-known protective effects on hypoxic damage, and significantly down-regulated the expression of damage-supportive genes,  .01) and ( < 0.001). We were able to distinguish between the effect produced by stem cell transplantation (, , , ) and the effect produced by supporting the tissue with proliferation-supporting medium (, ).

Conclusion: Beside revealing some clearly positive effects of stem cells transplantation on the stroke-affected brain, our results suggest that the tissue response triggered by stem cells points toward the desired, regeneration-supporting levels of expression of a certain gene at a certain time point.