Human neural stem cells can migrate, differentiate, and integrate after intravenous transplantation in adult rats with transient forebrain ischemia.

Intraparenchymally transplanted rodent-origin neural and human-origin mesenchymal stem cells migrate and differentiate in neurological diseases. By intravenously injecting human neural stem cells, we showed that transplanted human neural stem cells migrate to the damaged hippocampus, proliferate and differentiate into mature neurons and astrocytes in the adult rat brain with transient forebrain ischemia. We also demonstrated the migratory course of implanted human neural stem cells after intravenous injection. Our findings show that transplanted human neural stem cells differentiate into mature neurons to replace lost neural cells in the adult hippocampus with human-rat neural chimeras.