Treatment of injured neurons with bone marrow stem cells cotransfected by hTERT and Ad-BDNF in vitro.

The purpose of this paper is to study the anti-injury effect of bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs) transfected by human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) and adenovirous brain-derived neurotrophic factor (Ad-BDNF) in injured neurons. Rat injured neurons were induced in vitro and then cocultured with rBMSCs transfected by hTERT and Ad-BDNF. The anti-injury effect of rBMSCs transfected by hTERT and Ad-BDNF was detected by Western blot for neural apoptosis gene MAP2 and NF-kappaB and lactic dehydrogenase released by injured neurons. Our data demonstrated that graft rBMSCs transfected by hTERT and Ad-BDNF could increase the expression of BDNF in injured neurons and alleviate apoptosis of the injured neurons. According to these data, BDNF-BMSCs demonstrate a tendency to be protection against neuronal death caused by apoptosis which would last a long time after neural injury. The data also show the potential of BDNF-BMSCs as a promising therapeutic strategy that warrants further investigation in patients with traumatic brain injury.