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Neural
Stem Cell Transplantation Project
Curt Freed Curt.Freed@UCHSC.edu
&
David Patterson davepatt@eri.uchsc.edu
A mouse model of Down Syndrome
has been developed which mimics the behavioral features of the human disease.
The animal model, the Ts65Dn mouse, is a partial trisomy 16 which has triplicates
of many of the same genes seen in human trisomy 21. The mouse also develops
cognitive deficits such as slow performance in finding the submerged platform
in the Morris water maze, a well-established model of cognitive function in
rodents.
As with Down Syndrome and Alzheimer's disease, the deficits in the mouse become
worse with age. Because stem cells lining the ventricular system of the person
with Down Syndrome all share the abnormal trisomy phenotype, the brain does
not have a chance to repair itself with normal cells.
The neural stem cell transplantation project is testing transplants of normal
(and mutant) mouse neural stem cells in this mutant mouse model using normal
littermates as controls. The project team is using stem cells derived from the
subventricular zone of weanling mice using epidermal growth factor and basic
fibroblast growth factor, a technique which has been done for many years with
mouse, rat, and human cells. It is the project's hope that neural stem cell
transplants will improve the behavioral funtion of Ts65Dn mice. Learn more about
the Neuroscience
Training Program at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.