Neonatal Transplant in Hypoxic Injury.

Even with therapeutic hypothermia as standard of care, hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy in neonates often causes long-term disabilities. Stem cell therapy may be a successful treatment for HIE both in the acute and chronic time periods post-injury. Neurogenic astrocytes with characteristics of neural stem cells can be cultured as adherent monolayers and be induced to generate neuronal progeny in vitro and in vivo following reintroduction into the neural stem cell niche of both neonatal and adult hosts. Thus, these neurogenic astrocytes represent promising candidates for cell replacement therapy in HIE. Such an approach requires optimized cell cultivation protocols as well as extensive testing of donor cells to assess their capacity for engraftment, survival, and integration in the HIE animal models. In this chapter, we will describe methods of generating the HIE model, generating and culturing monolayer neurogenic astrocytes, and transplanting these cells into HIE animal models.