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Human fetal basal forebrain neurons grafted to the denervated rat hippocampus produce an organotypic cholinergic
O G Nilsson1, P Brundin, H Widner
1Department of Medical Cell Research, University of Lund, Sweden.
Abstract:
The septal/diagonal band (SDB) area, obtained from a 9- to 10-week-old aborted human fetus, was grafted to the hippocampal formation of adult, immunosuppressed rats subjected to an aspirative lesion of the fimbria-fornix. Nineteen weeks after transplantation, microscopical analysis revealed large, partly acetylcholinesterase (AChE)-positive grafts in the hippocampus in 3 of the 5 recipients. The AChE-positive grafts gave rise to a reinnervation of the host hippocampus and an AChE-positive lamination of the different hippocampal subfields with the same characteristics as the normal septum-derived innervation. Immunological evaluation of host sera revealed that all rats were immunized by the graft. This indicates that grafted human cholinergic SDB neurons can respond to or interact with factors that regulate and guide the innervation of the rat hippocampus.