Figure 1

Transplantation of NSPCs into the injured spinal cord. (A) Montages of confocal microscopic images of the intact and injured spinal cords immunostained with anti-GFP antibody to detect the distribution of the transplanted NSPCs. The sites of spinal cord transection (arrowhead) are clearly separated from the sites of transplantation of NSPCs (arrows). The fixed spinal cord sections were stained with both anti-GFP antibody (green) and anti-neurofilament-200 antibody (red). Bar, 200 μm. (B) Numbers of surviving cells 7 days after transplantation in the white and gray matter. Single sections containing the highest number of GFP-positive cells were selected and the total numbers of surviving cells in these sections were taken as a representation of the extent of surviving cells. In both the intact and injured spinal cords, there was a preference of transplanted cells to reside within the white matter (intact gray matter; 83.4 ± 28.9 cells, intact white matter; 398.5 ± 151.5 cells, t-test p < 0.05, injured gray matter; 8.2 ± 2.8 cells, injured white matter; 171.5 ± 28.5 cells, t-test p < 0.05). (C) Numbers of surviving cells 7 days after transplantation in the total area of the spinal cord sections. The difference between injured and intact spinal cords was statistically significant (intact; 481.9 ± 173.3 cells, injured; 179.7 ± 28.6 cells, t-test p < 0.05). (D) Normalized rostrocaudal distribution of transplanted cells in the intact and injured spinal cords. The proportion of transplanted cell numbers in each 500 μm section along the rostrocaudal axis was plotted. The difference of the cell distribution was statistically significant (Mann-Whitney-U test, p < 0.05).