Adewumi Honour O, Simkulet Matthew G, Küreli Gülce, Giblin John T, Lopez Arnaldo Bisbal, Erdener Şefik Evren, Jiang John, Boas David A, O'Shea Timothy M
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215-2407, USA.
Institute of Neurological Sciences and Psychiatry, Hacettepe University, Ankara 06230, Türkiye.
Exp Neurol. 2025 Mar;385:115117. doi: 10.1016/j.expneurol.2024.115117. Epub 2024 Dec 16.
Stem cell grafting can promote glial repair of adult stroke injuries during the subacute wound healing phase, but graft survival and glial repair outcomes are perturbed by lesion severity and mode of injury. To better understand how stroke lesion environments alter the functions of cell grafts, we employed optical coherence tomography (OCT) to longitudinally image mouse cortical photothrombotic ischemic strokes treated with allogeneic neural progenitor cell (NPC) grafts. OCT angiography, signal intensity, and signal decay resulting from optical scattering were assessed at multiple timepoints across two weeks in mice receiving an NPC graft or an injection of saline at two days after stroke. OCT scattering information revealed pronounced axial lesion contraction that naturally occurred throughout the subacute wound healing phase that was not modified by either NPC or saline treatment. By analyzing OCT signal intensity along the coronal plane, we observed dramatic contraction of the cortex away from the imaging window in the first week after stroke which impaired conventional OCT angiography but which enabled the detection of NPC graft-induced glial repair. There was moderate, but variable, NPC graft survival at photothrombotic strokes at two weeks which was inversely correlated with acute stroke lesion sizes as measured by OCT prior to treatment, suggesting a prognostic role for OCT imaging and reinforcing the dominant effect of lesion size and severity on graft outcome. Overall, our findings demonstrate the utility of OCT imaging for both tracking and predicting natural and treatment-directed changes in ischemic stroke lesion cores.
干细胞移植可在亚急性伤口愈合阶段促进成年中风损伤的胶质修复，但移植存活和胶质修复结果会受到损伤严重程度和损伤方式的干扰。为了更好地了解中风损伤环境如何改变细胞移植的功能，我们采用光学相干断层扫描（OCT）对接受同种异体神经祖细胞（NPC）移植治疗的小鼠皮质光血栓性缺血性中风进行纵向成像。在中风后两天接受NPC移植或注射生理盐水的小鼠中，在两周内的多个时间点评估OCT血管造影、信号强度和由光散射导致的信号衰减。OCT散射信息显示，在整个亚急性伤口愈合阶段自然发生了明显的轴向损伤收缩，NPC或生理盐水治疗均未对其进行改变。通过分析沿冠状平面的OCT信号强度，我们观察到中风后第一周皮质向远离成像窗口的方向急剧收缩，这损害了传统的OCT血管造影，但能够检测到NPC移植诱导的胶质修复。两周时，光血栓性中风处有中等程度但可变的NPC移植存活，这与治疗前通过OCT测量的急性中风损伤大小呈负相关，表明OCT成像具有预后作用，并强化了损伤大小和严重程度对移植结果的主导作用。总体而言，我们的研究结果证明了OCT成像在跟踪和预测缺血性中风损伤核心的自然变化和治疗导向变化方面的实用性。
