Experience with Human Fetal Cortical Brain Tissue Transplant in Adult Neuro-Degenerative Disorder‪.‬

Abstract Our team has been working on the problem of human fetal tissues' response to antigenic assaults, for the last two decades. In the present series, 12 patients with prolonged histories of Parkinsonism, who were not responding to anti-Parkinsonian drugs were enrolled for the study. What is intriguing is the survival, growth and proliferation of the grafted fetal brain tissue. Not a single histological study of the fetal brain tissues after removal from the axilla, showed any signs of graft vs. host or inflammatory reaction (Microphotograph 1-9) but there are features of growth of the transplanted cortical brain tissue along with its different components like neurogenesis, gliogenesis early neovascularisationand, angiogenesis etc., neither there was any systemic leucocytosis or lymphocytosis. Following ethical clearance fetal brain tissue was grafted in the HLA and sex randomized adult axilla, without any immunosuppressive support. Histological evidences at the transplanted tissue site suggest that the fetal cortical brain tissue can sustain a living in sex randomized, HLA randomized adult hosts, without the support of immuno-suppressive drugs and the tacit support of the blood-CSF and blood-brain barrier and other specific requirements of adult brain cells in the skull. Whether the clinical improvement in PD is transient or long lasting is presently under investigation along with basic questions like is it due to transplanted fetal dopaminergic or non- dopaminergic neurons or the growth factors and the cytokine mediated hitherto unknown reactions causing the clinical improvement