Hiroto Shibuki

Transplantation of adult rat hippocampus-derived neural stem cells into retina injured by transient ischemia

Neural stem cells are capable of differentiating along multiple central nervous system cell-type lineages, and their use as graft material has provided new strategies for the treatment of neuronal damage. We transplanted adult rat hippocampus-derived neural stem cells into eyes of adult rats that underwent ischemia-reperfusion injury. As control, the cells were also injected into normal rats eyes without ischemic insult. The rats were sacrificed at 1, 2, 4, and 8 weeks, and the eyes were examined histochemically. In eyes with the insult, the transplanted cells were well integrated into the host retinas and expressed Map2ab. In the control, none of the cells migrated into the retina. These results suggest that neural stem cells may be used as donor cells for transplantation to repair ischemic-injured retina.

Tubby-like protein 1 as an autoantigen in cancer-associated retinopathy.

Cancer-associated retinopathy (CAR) is a rare paraneoplastic syndrome that is characterized by retinal degeneration. Two cDNA clones, recoverin and tubby-like protein 1 (TULP1), were isolated from a human retinal cDNA library by using serum from a CAR patient as the probe. Both recoverin and TULP1 are retina-specific protein, and TULP1 is a member of tubby gene family. A determination of the recognized amino acid sequence of TULP1 by the patient serum and immunohistochemical studies on the distribution of TULP1 in the retina were done in this study.

Transplantation of neural stem cells into the eyes of the retina injured by transient ischemia

Stem cells of the central nervous system are capable of differentiating along multiple central nervous system cell-type lineages. and their use as graft material is promised to provide new strategies for treatment of neurndegenerative diseases and trauma. It is known that the stem cells are not integrated into the intact retina when they are transplanted into the eyes of adult rat. We examined whether the stem cells can be integrated into the retina injured by transient ischemia. The R-gal labeled stem cells derived from hippocampus of adult rat were injected into the vitreous cavity of the eyes whose retina was injured by transient ischemia. Transplanted cells were found to invade into the retinal ganglion cell layer 1 week after the transplantation, and they were found to be integrated into the retinal inner nuclear layer and show the appropriate morphology of retinal neuronal cells 3 weeks after the transplantation. It was suggested that neural stem cells may possibly be used as the donor of neural transplantation to reconstruct the neural network of ischemic-injured retina.