Neuroprotection of VEGF-expression neural stem cells in neonatal cerebral palsy rats

Cerebral palsy (CP) is a very common neural system development disorder that can cause physical disability in human. Here, we studied the neuroprotective effect of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-transfected neural stem cells (NSCs) in newborn rats with cerebral palsy (CP). Seven-day-old Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided into four groups: sham operation (control group), PBS transplantation (PBS group), VEGF + NSCs transplantation (transgene NSCs group) and NSCs transplantation groups (NSCs group). PBS, Transgene NSCs and NSCs groups respectively received stereotactic injections of PBS, lentiviral vector (pGC-FU-VEGF) infected NSCs or a NSCs suspension in the left sensory-motor cortex 3 days after CP model was established. The NSCs activity, their impacts on neural cell growth and apoptosis, brain development and animal behaviors were examined on the animals up to age 35-days. As expected, unilateral carotid artery occlusion plus hypoxia (cerebral palsy model) resulted in severe neural developmental disorders, including slowed growth, increased in cortical neuron apoptosis, decreased cerebral cortex micro-vessel density and retarded behavior developments. Transplantation of NSCs not only resulted in increases in VEGF protein expression in rat brains, but also largely prevented the behavioral defects and brain tissue pathology that resulted from cerebral palsy procedure, with animals received VEGF transfected NSCs always being marginally better than these received un-transfected cells. In conclusion, NSCs transplantation can partially prevent/slow down the brain damages that are associated with CP in the newborn rats, suggesting a new possible strategy for CP treatment. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.