Reduction of brain injury in neonatal hypoxic-ischemic rats by intracerebroventricular injection of neural stem/progenitor cells together with chondroitinase ABC.

Perinatal hypoxia-ischemia (HI) remains a critical issue. Cell transplantation therapy could be a potent treatment for many neurodegenerative diseases, but limited works on this kind of therapy have been reported for perinatal HI. In this study, the therapeutic effect of transplantation with neural stem/ progenitor cells (NSPCs) and chondrotinase ABC (ChABC) in a neonatal HI rat model is evaluated. Histological studies showed that the unaffected area of the brain in animals treated with NSPCs together with ChABC was significantly larger than that in the animals treated with vehicle or NSPCs alone. The wet weight of the brain that received the combined treatment was also significantly higher than those of the vehicle and their individual treatments. These results indicate that intracerebroventricular injection of NSPCs with ChABC reduces brain injury in a rat neonatal HI model.