Fig. 7. NSC transplanted in DCH_T into the center of severe spinal cord injury (SCI) can spread throughout large areas of non-neural lesion core tissue and form bridges of graft-derived neural tissue that connect separated areas of host neural tissue.

(A_1-6) Images show a graft derived from NSC transplanted in DCH_T into the non-neural lesion core of a SCI at the clinically realistic time of 2 days after injury. The graft has been stained by quadruple histofluorescence labeling for multiple markers including the transgenic reporter protein tdT (violet), which is expressed only by host astrocytes, the transgenic reporter protein GFP (green), which is expressed only by grafted cells, the astroglial and progenitor cell marker GFAP (red) and the nuclear marker DAPI, which are present in both graft and host cells. Images A_1-6 show the same field using different filter combinations. Note the large SCI lesion that is devoid of host astrocytes but is filled with NSC-derived grafted cells. Note that GFAP is expressed by both grafted and host astroglial cells. Note also the overlap of host and graft-derived astroglia at the borders of the lesion. Boxes in A₅ indicate areas shown at higher magnification in figures 8A and 9A,B. Scale bar = 250 μm.