Abstract
Studies of neural cell transplantation would be aided by the ability to damage or destroy, noninvasively and extremely selectively, grafted cells at defined times following their initial implantation. Mechanisms of graft integration and performance could be investigated, also providing insight into natural injury and repair mechanisms. At long wavelengths between 650 and 850 nm, laser energy can penetrate several millimeters of brain tissue without absorption or damage to the unpigmented tissue. However, targeted cells are selectively damaged by illumination at these long wavelengths if they contain latex nanospheres with incorporated cytolytic chromophores (e.g., chlorin e6). Light penetration allows many thousands of cells to be lesioned simultaneously, noninvasively, and deep within a surrounding matrix of other tissue. Such laser-activated damage has been termed laser photolysis (PL). We studied damage to C1300 neuroblastoma (NB) cells grafted into mouse neocortex in vivo by this process of PL. NB cells provided a simple and reproducible model of neural grafting, allowing direct histologic assessment of cellular growth and viability by distinct morphologic and mitotic criteria. Cells were cultured by standard methods, labeled in vitro by brief exposure to nanospheres containing chlorin e6, and grafted to sites within deep layers of mouse neocortex. Mice were exposed to transcranial, fractionated, unfocused pulses of 670-nm-wavelength energy totaling 90–120 J/cm2. We histologically assessed graft growth and cellular viability over a period from 2 d to 4 weeks, measured graft volumes quantitatively during the period of early rapid growth in controls (2 and 7 d), and generated 3-D reconstructions from serial sections to assist in visual analysis.
