Year 3

This grant determines the effect of a tissue bioengineering approach to stem cell survival and engraftment after stroke, as means of improving functional recovery in this disease. Stem cell transplantation in stroke has been limited by the poor survival of transplanted cells and their lack of differentiation in the brain. These studies use a biopolymer hydrogel, made of naturally occurring molecules, to provide a pro-survival matrix to the transplanted cells. The studies in past years developed the two chemical characteristics of hydrogels that contain recognition or signal elements for stem cells: “protein motifs” that resemble molecules in the normal stem cell environment and growth factors that normally communicate to stem cells in the brain. The hydrogels were engineered so that they contain these familiar stem cell protein motifs and growth factors and release the growth factors over a slow and sustained time course. In the past year on this grant, we tested the effects of hydrogels that had the combined characteristics of these protein motifs and growth factors, at varying concentrations, for their effect on induced pluripotent neural precursor cells (iPS-NPCs) in culture. We identified an optimum concentration for cell survival and for differentiation into immature neurons. We then initiated studies of the effects of this optimized hydrogel in vivo in a mouse model of stroke. These studies are ongoing. They will determine the cell biological effect of this hydrogel on adjacent tissue and on the transplanted cells—determining how the hydrogel enhances engraftment of the transplant. The behavioral studies, also under way, will determine if this optimized hydrogel/iPS-NPC transplant enhances recovery of movement, or motor, function after stroke.