Intracerebral grafting of neuronal cell suspensions. II. Survival and growth of nigral cell suspensions implanted in different brain sites.

Dissociated dopamine-rich cell suspensions were prepared from the ventral mesencephalon of rat embryos and injected in one or several sites in striatal and non-striatal regions in the dopaminergically denervated brain of adult rats. While the grafts survived well in all sites, the dopamine fibre outgrowth was markedly different depending on whether the grafts occurred in an area normally innervated by the mesencephalic dopamine neurones (i.e. neostriatum or nc. accumbens) or in areas not normally innervated by these neurones (i.e. parietal cortex, lateral hypothalamus or substantia nigra). Moreover, in grafts placed at different sites along the trajectory of the nigrostriatal pathway the outgrowing fibres remained confined to the graft, and there was little evidence that the implanted neurones could elongate their axons along the pathway of the nigrostriatal tract to reach the striatum from a distance. Thus, the intracerebral suspension grafts provided efficient reinnervation of a denervated target only when placed in the immediate vicinity of the target area. The results of multiple graft placements indicate that a relatively complete restoration of a lost innervation should be possible to achieve in large areas of the brain, such as the striatal complex, with the suspension grafting technique.