Transplants of embryonic motoneurones to adult spinal cord: survival and innervation abilities.

One goal of transplantation experiments involving damaged spinal cords is to reconstruct a functional innervation to muscles in the periphery. Embryonic spinal cord grafts have been shown to survive transplantation into adult spinal cord lacking motoneurones. Motoneurones from the graft appear to be able to innervate muscle tissue by being encouraged to grow across a bridge of peripheral nerve. Integration of grafted motoneurones appears to involve their migration from the graft into the host ventral horn, thus replacing depleted host neurones. These results suggest possible strategies of research that might lead to treatments of spinal cord injuries and disorders in which motoneurone loss occurs, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, spinal muscular atrophies and poliomyelitis.