Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University

5 ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN JoVE

Medicine

Intraspinal Cell Transplantation for Targeting Cervical Ventral Horn in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury

Angelo C. Lepore¹

¹Department of Neuroscience, Thomas Jefferson University Medical College

Neural precursor transplantation is a promising strategy for protecting and/or replacing lost/dysfunctional cervical phrenic motor neurons in spinal cord injury (SCI) and the motor neuron disorder, amyotrophic laterals sclerosis (ALS). We provide a protocol for cell delivery to cervical spinal cord ventral horn in rodent models of ALS and SCI.

Medicine

Quantitative Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Skeletal Muscle Disease

Bruce M. Damon^1,2,3,4, Ke Li^1,2, Richard D. Dortch^1,2, E. Brian Welch^1,2, Jane H. Park^1,2,4, Amanda K. W. Buck^1,2, Theodore F. Towse^1,2,5, Mark D. Does^1,2,3, Daniel F. Gochberg^1,2,6, Nathan D. Bryant^1,2

¹Institute of Imaging Science, Vanderbilt University, ²Department of Radiology and Radiological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, ³Department of Biomedical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, ⁴Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, Vanderbilt University, ⁵Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Vanderbilt University, ⁶Department of Physics and Astronomy, Vanderbilt University

Neuromuscular diseases often exhibit a temporally varying, spatially heterogeneous, and multi-faceted pathology. The goal of this protocol is to characterize this pathology using non-invasive magnetic resonance imaging methods.

Neuroscience

Functional and Morphological Assessment of Diaphragm Innervation by Phrenic Motor Neurons

Melanie Martin^1,2, Ke Li¹, Megan C. Wright², Angelo C. Lepore¹

¹Department of Neuroscience, Farber Institute for Neurosciences, Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University, ²Department of Biology, Arcadia University

Compound muscle action potential recording quantitatively assesses functional diaphragm innervation by phrenic motor neurons. Whole-mount diaphragm immunohistochemistry assesses morphological innervation at individual neuromuscular junctions. The goal of this protocol is to demonstrate how these two powerful methodologies can be used in various rodent models of spinal cord disease.

Biochemistry

The Identification of Sea Lamprey Pheromones Using Bioassay-Guided Fractionation

Anne M. Scott¹, Ke Li¹, Weiming Li¹

¹Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Michigan State University

Here, we present a protocol to isolate and characterize the structure, olfactory potency, and behavioral response of putative pheromone compounds of sea lampreys.

Engineering

Evaluating Targeting Accuracy in the Focal Plane for an Ultrasound-guided High-intensity Focused Ultrasound Phased-array System

Ke Li^1,2, Jingfeng Bai^1,2, Yazhu Chen^1,2, Xiang Ji^1,2

¹Biomedical Instrument Institute, School of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, ²Shanghai Med-X Engineering Center for Medical Equipment and Technology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

This study describes a protocol to evaluate the targeting accuracy in the focal plane of an ultrasound-guided high-intensity focused ultrasound phased-array system.