FIGURE 6.

Survival of iPSC-derived mature dopaminergic neurons in vivo. Transplanted (i.e., intracerebroventricular infusion) neurons of an apparent dopaminergic phenotype (re-programmed tail cells after 50 days in differentiation medium) displayed clear elevations of TH and BDNF expression after 24 h. Panels (A,B) display TH mRNA, while (C,D) display BDNF mRNA within cortical and hippocampal dissected tissue. Within each of the four panels, identical patterns of gene expression were observed. Namely, the dopaminergic neurons (previously reprogrammed by vector 20866) plus transfected cDNA BDNF (red lines) induced the highest level of TH and BDNF expression, whereas dopaminergic neurons (previously reprogrammed by vector 20866) in the absence of BDNF cDNA had intermediate levels of expression (green lines) and the HBSS controls clearly had the as the lowest (background) gene expression (blue lines).