Effects of biological sex mismatch on neural progenitor cell transplantation for spinal cord injury in mice. Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • Despite advancement of neural progenitor cell transplantation to spinal cord injury clinical trials, there remains a lack of understanding of how biological sex of transplanted cells influences outcomes after transplantation. To address this, we transplanted GFP-expressing sex-matched, sex-mismatched, or mixed donor cells into sites of spinal cord injury in adult male and female mice. Biological sex of the donor cells does not influence graft neuron density, glial differentiation, formation of the reactive glial cell border, or graft axon outgrowth. However, male grafts in female hostsfeature extensive hypervascularization accompanied by increased vascular diameter and perivascular cell density. We show greater T-cell infiltration within male-to-female grafts than other graft types. Together, these findings indicate a biological sex-specific immune response of female mice to male donor cells. Our work suggests that biological sex should be considered in the design of future clinical trials for cell transplantation in human injury.

published proceedings

  • Nat Commun

altmetric score

  • 27.35

author list (cited authors)

  • Pitonak, M., Aceves, M., Kumar, P. A., Dampf, G., Green, P., Tucker, A., ... Dulin, J. N.

citation count

  • 5

complete list of authors

  • Pitonak, Michael||Aceves, Miriam||Kumar, Prakruthi Amar||Dampf, Gabrielle||Green, Peyton||Tucker, Ashley||Dietz, Valerie||Miranda, Diego||Letchuman, Sunjay||Jonika, Michelle M||Bautista, David||Blackmon, Heath||Dulin, Jennifer N

publication date

  • January 2022