Request for Funding

Mentor: Keith Tansey, M.D., Ph.D.
Department: Neurology
Room number: L1.120
Mail Code: 8897
Phone number: 8-0487
E-mail: keith.tansey@utsouthwestern.edu
Project title: "Transplantation of adipose-derived progenitor cells in spinal cord injury: effects on functional recovery"

Animal subjects IRB approved project number: 0971-03-05-1

Project Type : Animal-based research

Brief Description of Project:

The main goal of the project would be to harvest adipose progenitor cells from rats, culture these cells, and transplant them back into the animals at the site of a spinal cord injury. Ideally, these cells would successfully differentiate into neurons and improve spinal cord function. The steps are as follows:

1. Harvest fat pads from a set of rats.
2. Carry out the cell culture purification/selection process to isolate the progenitor cells (about a 2 week process).
3. During that time, perform spinal cord contusions in the same group of rats (around one week after the fat pad harvesting procedure).
4. Transplant the cells back into the area of injury (some into non-injured cords, some undifferentiated ADAPs into injured cords, and some "neurotized" ADAPs into injured cords) and then follow the behavioral recovery of those rats (a 3 to 4 week process).
5. At the end of the recovery process, I will assist Dr. Tansey in performing some electrophysiological assessments of recovery.
6. After this assessment, we will sacrifice and perfuse the animals.
7. The remainder of the time spent in the laboratory would be spent on histological assessment of the transplanted cells and cell culture analysis.

Previous Research Activities or Publications with Medical Students:

2003 summer research:
Binh Nguyen MS0, development and transplantation of bioengineered channels for axonal regrowth in severed rat sciatic nerve
Deeba Ali, MS1, measurement of the cutaneus trunci muscle reflex in normal and spinal cord contused rats

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