Are there any studies that report on what happens when you transplant neurons from one brain region to another? For example, mouse primary corticals in to a hippocampus or cerebellum?
NB Not interested in ES/iPS derived neurons - curious specifically about things that are already bona fide neurons.
Thanks!
Hi! If the transplant is small enough to survive without direct access to blood vessels (oxygen and nutrients recach the cells by diffusion) there should be no reason to assume that it will be rejected (to my opinion). Later on even newly formed capillaries may get access to the transplant. Functionally this ectopic tissue will be more or less useless or might even interfere with function of the surrounding tissue e.g. causing seizures. I don not think that it will integrate in the local network.
I assume that this strongly depends on the developmental time-frame, in which you perform the transplantation. For example, NPCs from the lateral ganlionic eminence have been shown to successfully integrate into the spinal chord (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3361692/). As far as I know nothing like this has been done with mature neurons.
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