Plasticity and Neural Stem Cells in the Enteric Nervous System

Abstract

The enteric nervous system (ENS) is a highly organized part of the autonomic nervous system, which innervates the whole gastrointestinal tract by several interconnected neuronal networks. The ENS changes during development and keeps throughout its lifespan a significant capacity to adapt to microenvironmental influences, be it in inflammatory bowel diseases or changing dietary habits. The presence of neural stem cells in the pre-, postnatal, and adult gut might be one of the prerequisites to adapt to changing conditions. During the last decade, the ENS has increasingly come into the focus of clinical neural stem cell research, forming a considerable pool of neural crest derived stem cells, which could be used for cell therapy of dysganglionosis, that is, diseases based on the deficient or insufficient colonization of the gut by neural crest derived stem cells; in addition, the ENS could be an easily accessible neural stem cell source for cell replacement therapies for neurodegenerative disorders or traumatic lesions of the central nervous system. Anat Rec, 292:1940Rec, 292: -1952Rec, 292: , 2009. V V C 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Transplantation of Enteric Neural Stem/Progenitor Cells into the Irradiated Young Mouse Hippocampus

“…Against this background, we decided to investigate the feasibility of grafting the more easily accessible ENSPCs into the brain. ENSPCs exist in the ENS and have been suggested as a source for autologous cell therapy for CNS disorders (50,53). ENSPCs are identified by their expression of the low-affinity nerve growth factor receptor (p75) and nestin (3,53).…”

“…ENSPCs develop from the neural crest during embryogenesis (47,58) and reside in the adult intestinal wall in two separate locations, the myenteric plexus and the submucosal plexus in rodents and humans (27,44). ENSPCs can easily be accessed using laparoscopy and obtained as mucosal biopsies or in the form of intestinal pieces, such as the vermiform appendix (32,50).…”

601 The Appendix As a Viable Source of Neural Progenitor Cells to Functionally Innervate Bioengineered Gastrointestinal Smooth Muscle Tissues

“…The ENS resides in a continually changing environment in the gut that experiences constant insults, making plasticity and regeneration critical for proper functioning of enteric neurons [19,20]. Well-established protocols have been developed to isolate enteric NPCs from the GI tract [21,22].…”

The Spinal Cord Neural Stem Cell Niche

“…In the latter, contacts with the cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) located in the ventricles appear to be essential for the maintenance of SVZ stem cells (Lehtinen et al 2010). Stem and progenitor cells have also been identified in the peripheral nervous system, i.e., in the carotid body, the enteric nervous system and the adult dorsal root ganglia (Pardal et al 2007;Schafer, Van Ginneken, and Copray 2009;Singh et al 2009). Whereas there have been a tremendous number of publications on the brain niches, few have addressed this issue in the spinal cord.…”