Safety of Epicenter Versus Intact Parenchyma as a Transplantation Site for Human Neural Stem Cells for Spinal Cord Injury Therapy

This study compared transplantation into the spinal cord injury (SCI) epicenter (EPI) versus intact rostral/caudal (R/C) parenchyma in contusion‐injured athymic nude rats and assessed the survival, differentiation, and migration of human central nervous system‐derived neural stem cells (hCNS‐SCns). Regardless of transplantation site, hCNS‐SCns survived and proliferated; however, the total number of hCNS‐SCns quantified in the R/C transplant animals was twice that in the EPI animals, demonstrating increased overall engraftment. Findings suggest that the intact parenchyma may be a more favorable transplantation site than the injury epicenter in the subacute period post‐SCI. Neural stem cell transplantation may have the potential to yield repair and recovery of function in central nervous system injury and disease, including spinal cord injury (SCI). Multiple pathological processes are initiated at the epicenter of a traumatic spinal cord injury; these are generally thought to make the epicenter a particularly hostile microenvironment. Conversely, the injury epicenter is an appealing potential site of therapeutic human central nervous system‐derived neural stem cell (hCNS‐SCns) transplantation because of both its surgical accessibility and the avoidance of spared spinal cord tissue. In this study, we compared hCNS‐SCns transplantation into the SCI epicenter (EPI) versus intact rostral/caudal (R/C) parenchyma in contusion‐injured athymic nude rats, and assessed the cell survival, differentiation, and migration. Regardless of transplantation site, hCNS‐SCns survived and proliferated; however, the total number of hCNS‐SCns quantified in the R/C transplant animals was twice that in the EPI animals, demonstrating increased overall engraftment. Migration and fate profile were unaffected by transplantation site. However, although transplantation site did not alter the proportion of human astrocytes, EPI transplantation shifted the localization of these cells and exhibited a correlation with calcitonin gene‐related peptide fiber sprouting. Critically, no changes in mechanical allodynia or thermal hyperalgesia were observed. Taken together, these data suggest that the intact parenchyma may be a more favorable transplantation site than the injury epicenter in the subacute period post‐SCI.