Development of suitable locomotor assays to assess functional recovery following central nervous system (CNS) trauma can be an invaluable tool to an investigator.  Adult zebrafish <i>(Danio rerio)</i> has proven in recent years to be a model system that can be useful to evaluate not only mutational defects of the CNS but to also study perturbations involving direct injury or trauma.  Our laboratory has developed a locomotor assay to study fish locomotor swimming movement in a current of water.  Fish naturally swim in currents to maintain physiological levels of oxygen in the blood and our assay exploits this natural tendency.  Once a baseline of current swimming was established, we performed a 2mm deep traumatic brain injury (TBI) in the brainstem of an adult fish.  Our data show that there is a significant deficit in current swimming through approximately 7 days at which time recovery towards baseline behavioral swimming levels commences.  Next, we challenged the trends of recovery seen in the baseline injury through transplantation of characterized stem neurospheres.  We developed the approximately 100 micrometer neurospheres in rotating <i>in vitro</i> aggregate cultures.   Once characterized using the neural progenitor marker, neuroD1, specific quantities of aggregates were transplanted into the TBI site.  Initial data indicate that transplantation of neurospheres may alter the pathway and time course of locomotor swimming recovery that is seen in non-transplanted animals.

Development of a novel locomotor behavioral assay to evaluate the efficacy of neurosphere-mediated regeneration following CNS injury

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.