Thomas Jefferson University Medical College

2 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.

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.